| Comment Number: | OL-106225 |
| Received: | 12/6/2004 2:18:01 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | David |
| State: | TX |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
As a consumer, I have absolutely NO interest in having ANY company use automated calling technology to contact me. It is irrelevant to me whether that company has a pre-existing business relationship with me or not, I consider any pre-recorded message over the phone to be intrusive to my privacy and a complete waste of my time. Any provisions that allow telemarketing companies to more easily bombard me with unwelcome calls (which includes ALL of them) is completely unacceptable to me. There are already plenty of avenues for marketers to advertise to me already; it is time for the commission to stand up to these business interests and support the legitimate privacy interests of the public. A telephone call is MUCH more intrusive than a letter, email, or a TV/radio/newspaper ad. My email is already choked with spam; please do not allow telemarketers to extend this advertising to our phones as well. Therefore, please do NOT yield to this pressure to extend additional "safe harbor" coverage to allow prerecorded messages or to amend the current rules to allow any kind of weakening of the current "abandonment" percentage (which the proposed changes would clearly allow). I am especially concerned about this extension of the provisions about making it easier for companies with an existing business relationship to harass me with marketing calls, when you stop to consider how many companies I do business with each day, from the trivial (the corner gas station, convenience store, restaurants) to the major (banks, credit cards, etc.) and the amount of corporate mergers, I can't even begin to imagine the number of companies that will be able to claim they have an existing relationship with me. My telephone is an important means of communication to me, but it could become basically unusable for incoming calls if marketers are allowed to invest so little time and money with prerecorded calls; that is, after all why email "spam" is so overwhelming. Please stand firm and resist this pressure. This is a serious matter of consumer's rights. Thank you for your time.