| Comment Number: | OL-110389 |
| Received: | 12/16/2004 11:16:33 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Alan Hill |
| 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:
The new proposed rule changes to the National Do Not Call Registry do not sound like these are consumer friendly and would greatly weaken the present system, in my opinion! I am totally against these changes and ask that you not implement any changes to the present system! The idea of allowing companies to use prerecorded messages to call my home, waste my time, and fill up my answer machine with unsolicited advertising is totally against all of the reasons I signed up for the National Do Not Call Registry in the first place! As an example, the last few weeks of the 2004 political campaigns were very annoying and disruptive. I received at least 6 or 7 prerecorded political messages every day that totally disrupted my day or filled up my answer machine so that legitimate messages from family and friends were either lost or buried in the clutter of these political prerecorded messages. We were so glad when the elections were over and this harassment to our lives ended. If it were up to me, I would not allow political or charity oriented telemarketing phone calls either. This is a clear indication that the new proposed rule changes would allow businesses to harass and disrupt my life every day of the year. I pay for my phone usage (the telemarketing businesses that would be allowed to call me with prerecorded messages don't pay me for my phone usage) and I should not be subjected to ANY telemarketing calls at all if I so choose by listing my phone number on the Do Not Call Registry. Also, I should not have to do anything else to OPT OUT from receiving any type of telemarketing calls than listing my number on the Do Not Call Registry! Any plan to have an OPT OUT requirement that I must initiate as a consumer is unacceptable. If anything is done to OPT OUT, it should be the telemarketing and businesses requirement to initiate a form to receive my signed approval - similiar to the system for approval to receive faxes that was recently implemented for example. In conclusion, any form of precorded messages for telemarketing is already a major annoyance to me and I will be very upset and angered if any rule changes are implemented that will allow any increase in prerecorded messages, or any form of telemarketing. If anything, the rules should be tightened even more, not relaxed in any form. Also, no approval for prerecorded messages to be left on personal answer machines should ever be implemented - this is a violation of my private answer machine that I use to receive messages from family, friends, etc. to leave me important messages to me. I never want to have any form of advertising left on my personal answer machine (there are more than enough legitimate forms of advertising available to all businesses today). This is truly the worst form of spam!!! It is bad enough to have to deal with the exorbitant amount of email spam we receive today and to even think about allowing telemarketers to use prerecorded messages to be spammed to my answer machine is totally outrageous! I DO NOT WANT TO SEE ANY OF THESE PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE DO NOT CALL REGISTRY IMPLEMENTED!!! My recommendation is NO, NO, NO !!!! Sincerely, Alan Hill