| Comment Number: | OL-109814 |
| Received: | 12/11/2004 4:19:05 PM |
| Organization: | Roberts Communications |
| Commenter: | John Roberts |
| State: | FL |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
Federal Trade Commission RE: Precorded Message EBR Telemarketing Project No. R411001 To the Commissioners: I am writing in opposition to the proposed amendment to the TSR in response to the petition from Voice Mail Broadcasting Corporation. I am against this amendment because of my recent experience with pre-recorded political phone calls. I understand that these calls are now permitted and will continue to be permitted, but I believe they illustrate why it is a mistake to make an exception for commercial pre-recorded calls on the abandonment issue. As a voter in the swing state of Florida, I received up to a dozen calls daily from Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Danny de Vito, Wayne La Pierre, and assorted other partisans in the final month of the campaign. Every one of these calls was pre-recorded, and in my view, an abusive practice. I have no interest whatsoever in listening to recordings via my home or business telephone line; like most Americans, I even chafe at over-long voicemail prompts when I initiate the call. For a month this year, I felt bombarded by these ersatz, machine-generated calls intended to propagandize me. It was Orwellian, only instead of state-controlled loudspeakers assaulting my ears in public places, my own telephone was the instrument of attempted thought-control. To avoid clogging my answering machine and voice mail with these droning messages, I was forced to answer them as often as possible so as to be able to immediately terminate the call. If you act favorably on Voice Mail Broadcasting Corp's request, you will unleash a torrent of highly-suspect calls on the public, including those of us who have registered our desire to opt out of telemarketing by listing our numbers with the FTC or FCC. I say highly suspect because of the elasticity of the constraint of existing business relationship. I guarantee you this clause will be abused by Voice Mail Broadcasting and firms using similar technology by stretching the definition to include any potential entity where I have purchased a product, whether or not I intended such purchase to constitute an ongoing business relationship. Here's an example of how it will work: when I go to RadioShack to buy a battery for my camera, on checkout I am asked for a phone number or zip code. This information is used to build a database. In theory, my purchase of a single battery could entitle RadioShack, and the company which supplies batteries to it, to then telemarket me with pre-recorded calls based on this existing business relationship. If the battery I have purchased comes from a highly-diversified corporation, in theory I could be construed to have an existing business relationship with every subsidiary that corporation owns, and therefore be subject to telemarketing calls for dozens if not hundreds of products -- all based on one single purchase! It takes little imagination to foresee that this exception will be abused and result in millions of unwanted pre-recorded calls to individuals whose numbers are listed on your registry. Do not amend this rule! I am also opposed to the Direct Marketing Association's request to amend the 3% rule from a 1 day period to 30 day period. Such a change would permit telemarketers to defeat the intent of the rule by incurring an abandoned call rate far in excess of 3% during the most lucrative phoning periods, and then use calls during other days and hours to even out the 30 day rolling average. It will result in peak periods of abusive calls! Please retain the 1 day period for the 3% rule. Sincerely, John B. Roberts II