| Comment Number: | OL-103874 |
| Received: | 11/28/2004 5:33:00 PM |
| Organization: | Individual |
| Commenter: | James Wamsley |
| State: | GA |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
First let me thank you for the existing 'do not call' law. I am happy to have some peace and quiet for once. I want to mention that I am happy to receive paper mail from marketers. The nice thing about paper advertisements delivered to my mail box is that they do not wake me up. I am in control. Regarding the 'voice mail' or 'prerecorded' allowance under consideration, please understand that this is being asked for so that marketing companies may INCREASE the number of calls that they make and DECREASE their cost per call. I understand that it may be limited to those companies that have an existing relationship with a consumer, but please be skeptical. An existing relationship is easily subject to abuse. Let me ask you a common sense question: Do you personally respond better to a human being or to a pre-recorded message? If you are awoken from sleep by an advertisement (this is exactly what happens to millions of people every day) would you be more frustrated at recieving a tape recorded message? Yes, yes you would. This exact thing happened to me a few years ago. My cable company called me to let me know about the 'Live pay-per-view wrestling event' that was going to be on this weekend. I was very, very, very upset by this. I have never ordered a pay-per-view in my life. The next day I called the cable company and cussed out the person that answed the phone. This is the only way to get through to these marketers. They need to know how much we hate what they are doing. Being a telemarketer is a hard job. There is a high turnover rate. Why? Well imagine if you got yelled at, screamed at, insulted and hung up on every day. Would you want to go to work tomorrow? No. The telemarketing companies want a robot to do their dirty work because a robot does not care what you call them on the phone. This is very similar to what we see with 'spam', on the internet. If you send a million messages by robot, and upset 95% of the recipients, who cares? You're selling to the leftover 5%. There should be a simple principal to guide you in your decision regarding what to allow for telemarketers.... Ask what the customer wants. If one out of one hundred customers want something, that does not make it ok. Use majority rule. Do the majority of customers want a tape recorder calling them? No, that is totally silly. Remember that the telephone is very different from the postal mail. The telephone is an INTRUSIVE devise. IT DEMANDS ATTENTION, IT WILL WAKE YOU UP TO DELIVER IT'S MESSAGE. It will interrupt you from feeding your baby. It will pull you off the toilet for crying out loud! Recorded messages making phone calls are a nuisance!! They should be banned altogether for all time for everybody except the government. The only time that I want to hear a recorded message is when the govenment calls to say evacuate the city, there is a hurricane on the way. That's it. Public safety only. Nobody else. Common sense. Please be strong and their business be damned.