Comment Number: OL-101400
Received: 11/27/2004 6:20:47 PM
Organization:
Commenter: Henry Wertz
State: IA
Subject: Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 310
No Attachments

Comments:

Don't you dare let telemarketers use the "previous business relationship" line. E-Mail spammers can and do consider you to have a "preexisting business relationship" because your address was sold from one company to another.. that's a business relationship. Phone spammers will do the same thing. The additional problem with this is big companies with dozens of divisions. I used to get lots of phone spam from the likes of GTE .. but not asking for phone service. I'd get calls for credit cards and stuff.. then later on, I started getting calls advertising junk to be rung up on my GTE credit card (which I'd never asked for or received.) If I do business with a big company, they will then feel free to phone spam me for *completely unrelated products* from other divisions of the same company. Also, I won't be surprised to have some have a telemarketing division that works "on behalf" of other companies, causing me to receive recordings about products that company doesn't even offer. This is no good. Aditionally, if you make a loophole allowing recordings (which to my knowledge are presently illegeal even though companies seem to illegally use them), then I think the number of calls will increase significantly -- this way, they don't even have to pay a person to read the script, just record it once!