| Comment Number: | OL-112529 |
| Received: | 12/30/2004 6:34:33 PM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | John Hancock |
| State: | CA |
| 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 Commission should not loosen its DNC rules just to match the FCC's lesser interest in protecting citizens' interests. If any change is called for, it is for the FCC to match the rules of the FTC. This should be an effort to accommodate the clear preference of Americans, not a contest to pander to corporate desires. The overwhelming response of Americans, putting over 1/3 of all phone numbers on the DNC list (a number still increasing), should leave little doubt in any sane regulator's mind about whether people are clamoring for more or fewer annoying phone calls from business. / Irritating phone calls are no less irritating because they are recorded. Unlike a call from an actual human, it is not possible to tell a recording to put me on its DNC list. With charities, politicians and existing business relationships calling phone numbers on the DNC list, we still have a very large number of unwelcome callers that need to be told, one by one, not to call. Since a ''business relationship'' is readily established by any inquiry or purchase, the universe of companies that can claim a basis to make junk phone calls is huge. / The only real limitation on an explosion of these calls is the expense of using an actual human to make them, even if the human is calling cheaply from India. Of course, the only factor that forces the use of live callers is the FTC abandonment rules. With automation able to produce tens or hundreds of millions of irritating recorded calls each hour, we are likely to be flooded with this junk from business. We have no realistic way to make it stop. / You may think this is readily solved by calling the companies and telling them to stop the annoying phone calls. False. Have you telephoned customer service [sic] at a business in the last 5 years? Were you able to get an actual human on the phone? Did you nearly go insane from the voice prompts when you tried? Did you finally give up in frustration? Why do you think business would make it easy -- indeed, really possible at all -- to ''opt out''? / If companies have to get customers to ''opt-in'' to recorded calls, they will make it easy and inviting to do so. If we must ''opt-out'', they will make it as impossible as tech support or other customer service [sic] tasks are now. / FTC, you did well by reducing the number of junk calls we must put up with. It was remarkable, especially in the Bush administration, for a federal agency to be actually helpful to citizens in a way that many businesses do not support. Please to not destroy your own record of listening to people instead of corporations alone. Thank you.