Telemarketing Worsens In Spite of Do Not Call Registry

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Telemarketing Worsens In Spite of Do Not Call Registry

By Courtney Coren

More and more telemarketers are finding a way around the Do Not Call Registry put in place by the federal government, and customers are wondering why it’s no longer working like it used to.

The Federal Trade Commission established the Do Not Call Registry as a place where consumers could register their phone number with the promise that telemarketers would leave them alone; however, businesses are ignoring the mandate, consumers say, and they’re being bothered anyway, The Los Angeles Times reports.

“There’s been a real surge recently,” Dan Yeh of Huntington Beach, California, told the LA Times. “I’ve been getting five or six calls a day, all hours, seven days a week.”

The problem that residents are starting to notice is that businesses are using robocalls that are used to get a person on the phone before connecting them to a telemarketer, and they are using a telephone line that hides where the telemarketer is calling from.

“I’ve given up answering the land line,” said Rory Johnston of Hollywood, California. “They’re nearly all robocalls.”

Lois Greisman, associate director of the FTC division that oversees the do-not-call list, said that these consumers are not alone in their complaints. She said that in 2011, 2.6 million complaints about do-not-call violations were filed with the federal agency. And in 2012, that number went up 54 percent to almost 4 million.  

“We’re definitely seeing an uptick in consumer complaints,” Greisman said.

She also said that these are not high-profile companies using these tactics.

“This isn’t the Fortune 500 calling you,” Greisman said. “These are fraudsters, and they were never going to comply with the do-not-call list.”

Greisman says part of the problem is the technological advances that have been made in recent years that make it easier and cheaper to make calls such as auto-dialers that can make calls in the thousands per minute. She also said that telemarketers were able to trick consumers by hiding their identities to break through the caller-ID feature that so many use now.

She further explained that when the Do Not Call Registry was initially put in place 10 years ago, that federal officials did not know the type of sophisticated technology marketers would come up with to overcome it.

“The telecom system looked very different back then,” Greisman said.

Marketers launched lawsuits against the FTC saying that the registry violated their right to free speech. However, a federal appeals court did not see it that way, and said that the do-not-call list “advances the government’s important interests in safeguarding personal privacy and reducing the danger of telemarketing abuse.”

The FTC has caught roughly 530 individuals and businesses that have violated the registry, but Greisman admits that ending robocalls and telemarketing calls completely may be next to impossible.

“You can never stop anything 100 percent,” she said. “But the problem of spam has been substantially minimized by filtering technology. I’m hopeful that the same can happen with robocalls.”

Greisman did say that they are looking at how technology can be used to prevent the telemarketer’s phone calls, but at this point the best thing consumers can do is to continue to report the unwanted calls to the FTC.

Take Legal Action

There are other actions consumers can take to hold a company liable for contacting them without their permission. If your received an unsolicited phone call or text message, you may be eligible to participate in a free class action lawsuit investigation. Visit the Text Message Spam, Cell Phone Call TCPA Class Action Lawsuit Settlement Investigation for learn more.

Updated July 24th, 2013

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