41 Million Sign Up for National Do-Not-Call List

ejbst25 writes "The first wave of the do not call registry sign up ends 8/31. There is plenty of news coverage but they say there is already over 41 million numbers registered."

Mark My Words

[not_a_george]

October 2.. any city, USA
I hope no one needs to go to the unemployment office. Poor telemarketers..

Out of a total 110 million "households"

[Peter Simpson]

(from the US census) Now, I realize that's probably not a valid comparison, there are probably many more phones than "households", but it's got to be close (within an order of magnitude?).

That means 50% of the households don't want junk phone calls. I'd say that's a pretty big "get stuffed" to the telemarketing industry.

And those are only the ones that cared/figured out/remembered to sign up!

Congress & FTC...are you listening?

Watch out for the new ticks

[_LORAX_]

Be wary of the following if you have signed up for the list.

• Freebies: Often they come with the fine print that you exempt yourself from the list for 18 months.
  
• Sweepstakes: Ditto
  
• Checkout phone requests: If you give them your # they can call you
  
• Many many other tricks
  

Basicly there are only a few cases where you can legitimatly recieve calls.

• Charities
  
• Politicians
  
• To set up a personal meeting where no selling occurs over the phone
  

So just watch the fine print on anyhting that you put your phone # on or you could end up making the DNC list useless.

Re:Do not patronize

[MImeKillEr]

Can we add companies to the list that use door-to-door salesmen who still insist on knocking on my door despite the No Soliciting and No Trespassing signs?

Please?!?

Re:Out of a total 110 million "households"

[Sphere1952]

"That means 50% of the households don't want junk phone calls. I'd say that's a pretty big "get stuffed" to the telemarketing industry."

That means 50% of the households don't want junk phone calls so badly they rushed to sign up the instant they heard about it.

You get 50% doing anything in the U.S. and that means there's 49% that just didn't get around to it.

Re:This would be great if it worked

[afidel]

The national DNC list does not take effect until Oct 1 so give it some time =)

Re:Summarized

[steelrecluse]

This is a red herring. Telemarketing companies are moving those jobs overseas anyway, it is the ideal job to move to India etc as it is done completely over the phone. So when Telemarketing companies whine about this law causing millions of lost jobs ask them how many of those jobs would have been shipped overseas anyway...

Re:This would be great if it worked

[N7DR]

I am on the Colorado list. Not long ago I got a call and, since I had nothing much better to do, talked to the telemarketer nicely to extract as much info as possible (since it's my experience that as soon as you take a combative approach, they hang up before you've got enough information to report them).

I then went to the Web site to report them. The Web site makes it clear that the whole do-not-call system only works properly if violators are reported. So I went through a few pages of filling out forms with all the tedious details of the call. Then I hit the "submit" button and get a "your submission could not be processed" error.

OK, thinks I. This is because the morons expect me to be using IE. So I went through it all again using IE instead of Firebird. Same thing.

So I send them an e-mail at the mailto address, telling them that I wanted to report a violation and was unable to do so because the web site repeatedly gave me an error when trying to process the information.

I never heard anything from them.

I'm not sure what to conclude from this story. But I ended up being even more ticked off at the state government than I was at the telemarketer. And that's a pretty high threshold to reach.

I sure hope that the national list has a more effective mechanism for reporting offenders.

Re:Cell Phone Number

[aliens]

She probably put it as a phone number when filling in some form. That list was then sold to telemarketters. There's no way for them to know.

Re:Rights?

[carbon3C]

What about the rights of the individual to NOT ANSWER or to HANG UP on telemarketers. What about the right of the individual to block the intrusion in the first place? I never never never answer my phone when it says "Out of area". Should marketers have the right to turn on your TV set any time of the day so they can share their ads with you?!?!? According to your twisted view of things, it sounds like they should. The cost of productivity due to telemarketer interruptions is so high that we should be allowed to sue for damages. Give me a break. Since when do rights allow others to encroach upon another individual or his property against his will?

I'm sorry...

[gfxguy]

I'm failing to see why eliminating the jobs of people whose job it is to annoy other people is a bad thing. I'm just not seeing the downside, here.

Re:Bit of info....

[RESPAWN]

While I'm glad I some protection from telemarketers I know I am still going to get calls from the police asking for donations and silently threatening to ticket me if I don't donate.

Have you ever thought about the fact that it's probably not a policeman calling you soliciting you for donations, and that the person calling to solicit donations could in fact be from an outside contracting company? I spent some time working for such a company in my local area. (Don't worry I wasn't a telemarketer for them.) The "police officers" that called (who btw, never explicitly say that they are police officers) were merely normal people in a room with a list of phone numbers. They work for a company who contracts out to various police organizations to solicit donations for them, pick up the donations, and then give the donations to the non-profit group. There was no bad guy list also submitted to the police with the identifying information of those who did not donate. Although a donation and the applicaiton of a sticker to your car may help keep you from getting ticketed (I believe it did me once), there is no penalty for not donating, despite what may be implied.

Caveat: This was only in my area. It may be different in other areas and with larger non-profit organizations for whom it is more financially viable to handle the solicitations and collecting in house instead of farming it out to a telemarketing company. But even in those situations I'm betting that the callers would still be normal people simply working for a pay check whose only motivation to get you to donate is their commission. Most real police officers have better things to do with their time.

Re:This is a horrible idea

[boarder]

"At the end of the day, you've taken away jobs and hurt the economy. That's why this is a bad idea."

That is the worst and most idiotic argument for telemarketing I've ever heard... and it is the exact one that telemarketers use.

Yes, it will take away jobs, but you know what? I don't give a crap. Screw those people for taking a job harassing me. It's called capitalism: the market doesn't want them, so they don't prosper. Would you complain if they made SPAM illegal?

As for hurting the economy, I doubt that will matter in the long term. Sure, there will be a lot of lost jobs; but they aren't highly skilled/trained jobs, so those people can move to any other unskilled labour position. The market will adjust.

41 million people DON'T WANT THEM CALLING! That's about as many people as voted for G.W.Bush. I'm on the DMA's no call list, and I still get calls... that shows their self-regulating DOES NOT WORK!

Re:Got shell scripting?

[cK-Gunslinger]

Sounds good in theory (you'd probably need your own domain, as each group of 3 numbers probably needs a unique email addy), but it would probably do more harm than good. It would probably be obvious that someone "cheated" and the TM's would petition the gov that the list is invalid and can't be used at all.

Why not just sign up all the numbers that affect you personally, and let eveyone else do the same?

Re:Cell Phone Number

[HomerJay]

That's not completely true, up until last year I had a cell phone with an area code and exchange that was used for land lines as well as cell phones. I'd still have that number had I stayed with the same cell provider.

wow, thanks for making my point

[boarder]

"You could have requested to be added to the do
not call lists for each individual call center,
and eventually you'd have been removed from all
the call centers."

Umm, I do just that. Every time any telemarketer calls while I'm home, I tell them that. I also ask them if they are a member of the DMA (which most aren't). This will NEVER stop the illegal auto-dialed calls... it also doesn't stop the calls that come from companies that hang up if they call you and THEIR reps aren't available to talk to you (but keep your number in their list). One company called twice a day for 3 weeks only to hang up because nobody was there on their end (I called the atty general to file a complaint and finally got the issue resolved).

The whole point is that saying "put me on your do not call list" DOES NOT WORK. And, even if it did, it would take a year to get through to every call center that might call me if I waited for them to call. Not only that, but once I move and change phone numbers, the calls start right back up... a central do not call list allows me to quickly stop those calls again.

"And if they called you back within 10 years,
you could sue them. That's the law."

Have you tried to sue a telemarketer for calling? I have. It is not easy, and I did end up giving up. First off, getting the necessary info from them takes knowledge of what you need. Next, you have to go through a long, arduous process of court systems and contacting call centers and proof and stuff like that. It sucks.

"You're probably also the kind of person who
gets mad if we call as early as 8AM or as late
as 9PM, aren't you? Well, that's the US law, so
if you don't like it, contact your government
and get your laws changed."

Ummm... excuse me? Isn't that EXACTLY what this story is about? We, the U.S. people, are saying we don't want you to call. The government is finally listening and changing the law. Now, the telemarketers are getting angry. They don't like it? That's the law, as you say.