The Telephone Preference Service is getting cut off.
The Direct Marketing Association announced Thursday that it would phase out the service “as it currently exists.”
The TPC allows individuals to inform the DMA that they do to want to be solicited by phone. The DMA puts their names on a list that association members must honor for five years.
“We began the Telephone Preference Service in 1985 as a way to help consumers who wanted to reduce the number of marketing calls they receive,” said Patricia Kachura, senior vice president for ethics and consumer affairs for the DMA, in a statement. “But with the widespread use of the federal government’s National Do Not Call Registry, our efforts have become confusing and duplicative for consumers and are creating an additional and unnecessary expense for our members.”
The decision drew praise from at least one other industry group.
“The Telephone Preference Service is not as relevant as it used to be with federal do-not-call laws and I applaud them for doing this,” said Tim Searcy, president of the American Teleservices Association. “It was also very expensive to maintain.”
Searcy said he had no precise figure, but that cost might come to than $1 million a year.
Asked if he thought the DMA’s decision would encourage more fraudulent telemarketers to come out of the woodwork, Searcy said: “The $11,000 fine [for violating the DNC rule] is an effective deterrent.”
John Jay Daly, former senior vice president of the DMA and architect of its Mail Preference Service, the prototype for the TPS, said the DMA’s decision was tantamount to saying: “Let the federal government take care of it” with the federal do-not-call list.
Similarly, the Council of Better Business Bureaus believes the federal law “will continue to provide consumers protection from unwanted telemarketing calls,” said spokeswoman Sheila Adkins.
On the other hand, Bob Bulmash, president of Private Citizen Inc., a Naperville, IL privacy advocacy, dismissed the TPS as a ruse to forestall potential legislative action.
“On the TPS list, they would have various permutations of my name but no phone number, so they really didn’t want it to work,” he said.
On Nov. 1, the, DMA will no longer accept new consumer registrations for the TPS. Because consumer names remain on the service for five years, DMA members will have to honor consumers' requests not to be called by scrubbing their prospecting lists against the TPS file until Dec. 31, 2011.
Until that time, DMA will continue to remove disconnected numbers, update area code splits and changes on the TPS file, and eliminate the names of consumers who have been on TPS for five years.
The DMA said it would continue to maintain the TPS registry and accept new registrations for residents of Maine, Pennsylvania and Wyoming— states for which the TPS is, by law, the official state registry.
The phase-out of TPS will not affect the DMA’s MPS E-mail Preference Service or Deceased Do Not Contact List.
DMA's consumer Web site, www.dmaconsumers.org will provide information to assist consumers during the phase out period. Marketers will find complete information and instructions about the phase out at http://preference.the-dma.org/products/tpssubscription.shtml.
