Once upon a time, telemarketing was a relatively new thing. The idea of people calling you up at your home to try to sell you something was unheard of, but it quickly became very profitable. Suddenly, there were telemarketing companies popping up all over the place. It was no longer safe to answer your phone. People were starting to get annoyed, to put it mildly.

To the rescue came congress and the beginning of telemarketing laws as we know them today was just on the horizon.

Congress actually got into the act in 1991. What they did was pass an act that granted consumers certain rights to defend themselves against these annoying telemarketing calls, no offense to those in the industry. One of the things they did, which was actually a work of genius, was to write up what was called an anti telemarketing script for consumers to use when receiving a call they suspected was a telemarketer. In this script they would ask questions like, "Are you calling to sell me something?" "Can you tell me your full name?" "Can you tell me the company name?" "Do they have a do not call list?" "Can you put me on that list?" If they answer no to any of these questions then you can legally sue them.

Congress was finally going to take a proactive role against annoying telemarketing calls. In addition to the script, obviously there had to be laws put in place. Unfortunately, congress didn't have control over the telephones. This was an FCC matter. So the best congress could do was to go to the FCC and ask them to solve this problem, giving the FCC their suggestion to set up a national database of telephone numbers of all consumers who wished not to be called by telemarketers.

However, the FCC had other ideas, which didn't surprise anybody. After all, by reducing the number of calls made, this meant less money for the phone companies and certainly this was not in the FCC's best interests as unhappy phone companies meant an unhappy FCC. Therefore, what the FCC proposed was, what they called a more "cost efficient" series of "company do not call lists", which essentially put the burden of calling every company the consumer didn't want to be bothered by, on the consumer himself. So either you had to call the company beforehand, which was pretty hard to do, or you had to wait for them to call you first. Yes, this was certainly a great solution that the FCC had, one that nobody but the telemarketers and the FCC liked.

However, it didn't last long. Finally, ten years later, the FTC did what the FCC wouldn't do. Because of the drop in long distance rates, calls from overseas from telemarketers started to become very common. Many of these were outright scams. This is when the FTC said, enough is enough and stepped in.

Basically, what the FTC did was make it so that some serious restrictions were put on calls coming in from automated machines. No longer could these machines be the whole call itself. At some point a real operator had to come on and if the consumer wished, he could ask the operator a number of questions and ultimately be put on a do not call list which would take care of calls for all companies, not just the one calling. If the company failed to do this, they were held accountable.

The law itself is pages long and there is no need to reprint it here. You can see this law online if you wish by going to the FTC web site. You can register there to be placed on the do not call list. Telemarketing companies have to pay a fee to get this list and if you are on it, they must not call you or be subject to heavy fines.

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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Telemarketing
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