By Jennifer C. Kerr
So much for silence from
telemarketers at the cherished dinner hour, or any other hour of the day.
Complaints
to the government are up sharply about unwanted phone solicitations,
raising questions about how well the federal "do-not-call" registry is
working. The biggest category of complaint: those annoying prerecorded
pitches called
robocalls that hawk everything from lower credit card interest rates to new windows for your home.
Robert
Madison, 43, of Shawnee, Kan., says he gets automated calls almost
daily from "Ann, with credit services," offering to lower his interest
rates.
"I am completely fed up," Madison said in an interview.
"I've repeatedly asked them to take me off their call list." When he
challenges their right to call, the solicitors become combative, he
said. "There's just nothing that they won't do."
Madison, who works for a software company, says his
phone number
has been on the do-not-call list for years. Since he hasn't made any
progress getting "Ann" to stop calling, Madison has started to file
complaints about her to the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the
list.
Amid fanfare from consumer advocates, the federal
do-not-call list was put in place nearly a decade ago as a tool to limit
telemarketing sales calls to people who didn't want to be bothered. The
registry has more than 209 million phone numbers on it. That's a
significant chunk of the country, considering that there are about 84
million residential customers with traditional landline phones and
plenty more people with cellphone numbers, which can also be placed on
the list.
Telemarketers are supposed to check the list at least
every 31 days for numbers they can't call. But some are calling anyway,
and complaints about phone pitches are climbing even as the number of
telemarketers checking the registry has dropped dramatically.
Government
figures show monthly robocall complaints have climbed from about 65,000
in October 2010 to more than 212,000 this April. More general
complaints from people asking a telemarketer to stop calling them also
rose during that period, from about 71,000 to 182,000.
At the same
time, fewer telemarketers are checking the FTC list to see which
numbers are off limits. In 2007, more than 65,000 telemarketers checked
the list. Last year, only about 34,000 did so.
Despite those numbers, the FTC says the registry is doing an effective job fighting unwanted sales calls.
"It's
absolutely working," Lois Greisman, associate director of the agency's
marketing practices division, said in an interview with The Associated
Press. But, she said, "the proliferation of robocalls creates a
challenge for us."
Greisman said prerecorded messages weren't used
as a major marketing tool in 2003, when the registry began. "In part
because of technology and in part because of greater competitiveness in
the marketplace, they have become the marketing vehicle of choice for
fraudsters," she said.
For people trying to scam people out of their money, it's an attractive option. Robocalls are hard to trace and cheap to make.
With
an autodialer, millions of calls can be blasted out in a matter of
hours, bombarding people in a struggling economy with promises of debt
assistance and cheap loans. Even if a consumer does not have a phone
number on the do-not-call list, robocalls are illegal. A 2009 rule
specifically banned this type of phone sales pitch unless a consumer has
given written permission to a company to call.
Political
robocalls and automated calls from charities, or informational
robocalls, such as an airline calling about a flight delay, are exempt
from the ban. But those exemptions are being abused, too, with consumers
complaining of getting calls that begin as a legitimate call, say from a
charity or survey, but then eventually switch to an illegal
telemarketing sales pitch.
Robocalls can be highly annoying to
consumers because they're hard to stop. Fraudsters use caller-ID
spoofing so that when a person tries to call back the robocaller, they
get a disconnected number or something other than the source of the
original call.
The best thing people can do when they get an
illegal robocall is to hang up. Do not press "1'' to speak to a live
operator to get off the call list. If you do, the FTC says, it will
probably just lead to more robocalls. The caller will know you're there
and willing to answer, and may continue to call.
The FTC says
people can also contact their phone providers to ask them to block the
number. But be sure to ask whether they charge for that. Telemarketers
change caller-ID information often, so it might not be worth paying a
fee to block a number that will soon change.
The industry says most legitimate telemarketers don't utilize robocalls to generate sales.
"They
give a bad name to telemarketers and hurt everybody," says Jerry
Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs at Direct
Marketing Association, a trade group.
Cerasale says the
do-not-call list has resulted in telemarketers making far fewer cold
calls to random people. Instead, he says, marketers have shifted to
other methods of reaching people, such as mail, email or targeted
advertisements on websites. That, he said, could be one of the reasons
that the number of telemarketers checking the registry has dropped so
sharply.
In light of the increased complaints, the FTC is stepping
up efforts to combat robocalls. It recently released two consumer
videos to explain what robocalls are and what to do about them. It also
announced an October summit to examine the problem and explore the
possibility of emerging technology that might help trace robocalls and
prevent scammers from spoofing their caller ID.
Enforcement is
another tool. The FTC has brought cases against about a dozen companies
since 2009, including Talbots, DirecTV and Dish Network. The cases have
yielded $5.6 million in penalties.
The agency said this month that
it was mailing refund checks to more than 4,000 consumers nationwide
who were caught up in a scam where the telemarketer used robocalls from
names like "Heather from card services" to pitch worthless credit card
rate reduction programs for an up-front fee. Checks to consumers range
from $31 to $1,300 depending on how much was lost.
To file a
complaint with the FTC, people can go online to www.ftc.gov or call
888-382-1222 to report their experience for possible enforcement.
Debt collectors have come under fire for illegally menacing people
behind on their bills with threats of jail. What makes this approach
unusual is that the ultimatum comes with the imprimatur of law
enforcement itself — though it is made before any prosecutor has
determined a crime has been committed.
