Consumers on Do Not Call Registry File over 15,000 Complaints Against Telemarketers

Consumers registered with the National Do Not Call list have filed more than 15,000 complaints against telemarketers who continue to call them.

The Do Not Call list, which opened to consumer registrations on June 27, 2003, currently contains 53.7 million telephone numbers. Telemarketers began accessing the Registry on September 2, 2003, through a Web site specifically developed for telemarketers, telemarketing.donotcall.gov. The telemarketer site permits the user to create an organizational profile that enables them to pay for and obtain the area codes they need, in order to remove registered numbers from their active calling lists. As of October 15, 2003, nearly 21,000 organizations have accessed the Registry with 550 telemarketers downloading all area codes in the Registry. On average, each telemarketer retrieved about 45 area codes from the total national database of 317 area codes.

For enforcement purposes, consumer complaints received into the FTC database are made available to more than 800 law enforcement agencies, including the offices of all state Attorneys General.