The Federal Trade Commission has rejected a two-year-old petition from Voice Mail Broadcasting Corporation that would have allowed telemarketers to make prerecorded calls with an opt-out provision to consumers with whom the seller has an established business relationship. The Commission is giving telemarketers until January 2, 2007, to discontinue such calls.
In 2003, the FTC amended the Telephone Sales Rule to ban call abandonment, in which the consumer answers and finds no one on the line, but permitted telemarketers to play a prerecorded message when a consumer answers in up to three percent of calls.
VMBC petitioned the FTC to let telemarketers deliver a prerecorded message to consumers with whom the seller has an established business relationship. The agency received about 13,600 public comments on the proposal, of which more than 13,000 were in opposition. The FTC cites widespread consumer opposition as one reason for its rejection of the proposal.
The ruling does not appear to affect prerecorded informational calls, messages delivered to a voice mail or answering machine, collection calls, certain business-to-business calls, or surveys. The FTC said that solicitation calls that are made with a consumer’s express written consent continue to be allowed.
The FTC has also proposed changing the method for measuring the maximum allowable call abandonment rate from three percent per day per calling campaign to three percent per 30-day period per calling campaign. The proposal responds to several petitions filed with the FTC by the Direct Marketing Association and others.
Both the Federal Communications Commission and the FTC prohibit call abandonment at a rate of three percent. However, the FCC measures the three percent rate over a 30-day period, while the FTC currently measures it per day per calling campaign. The fix would bring the two conflicting agency rules into better—but not perfect—alignment. If the FTC makes the change, it would result in a per 30-day period per calling campaign rule, as opposed to the FCC’s per 30-day period rule.
Interested parties have until November 6 to file comments. Read the FTC notice.