| Comment Number: | OL-101436 |
| Received: | 11/27/2004 6:28:59 PM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Stanley Yamane |
| State: | MA |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
The change proposed by VMBC seems to be ill-considered as it undermines the main point of the National Do Not Call Registry. People who put their names on this registry to not want to accept telemarketing calls - regardless of existing business relationship. The fact that the proposal requires the creation of additional Do Not Call Registries suggests the expectation that this is a form of intrusion people are likely not to want. Further, by making them per-caller registries, this change requires consumers to take on the nearly impossible task of registering not to receive these calls from every telemarketing firm in existence. This is exactly the sort of burden that the National Do Not Call Registry relieved us of so well. This sort of "per sender' list was tried as a way to control spam on the Internet and was found to be completely inadequate. The fact that the FCC's similar regulations have such an exception should be seen as a failure of the FCC, rather than a reason for the FTC to follow the FCC's judgment in this case. The request to change the measurement period of abandonment from a single day to a 30-day period seems less of a problem, although it does seem to make abuses of the system more likely by providing a larger window over which abuses can be measured [the statement could be made that there was an expectation that abandonment rates would fall later in the month] whereas the current single day window allows for better oversight of emerging conditions.