The Direct Marketing Association plans to request clarification on several aspects of the pending telemarketing regulations once the new requirements are filed in the federal registry. Publication within the registry could come as soon as Friday.
At issue are several gray areas, and at least one restriction on which the DMA will ask for reconsideration, according to Jerry Cerasale, the organization’s senior vice president of government affairs.
For instance, the new federal do-not-call list, which is set to become live on Oct. 1, does not differentiate between residential telephone numbers and phone numbers for home-based businesses.
The new ruling requires that individual states merge their lists with the new federal list within 18 months of the Oct. 1 launch date. The DMA plans to inquire whether interstate telemarketers have to purchase both state and federal lists during that period.
Once on the do-not-call list, consumers who have established business relationships with marketers can still be reached–with certain limitations.
Cerasale noted that the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission have different standards for predictive dialers.
The FTC requires that call center representatives must be available within two seconds of the consumer’s completed greeting. But the FCC wants either a live operator or a recorded message.
In addition, the agencies differ over how call abandonment rates are calculated.
The FCC record-keeping requirement for abandonment rates is considerably less burdensome for marketers, according to Cerasale. The FCC also permits the use of prerecorded messages when there is an established business relationship.
The DMA is also going to seek clarification on caller ID technology requirements. According to Cerasale, certain switches and T1 lines might result in calls appearing as “caller unknown” without there being anything callers can do to avoid this.
“It may be that marketers have to make some significant technology investments in changing their switches, but we have to check with the FCC to see what they meant,” he said.
The DMA plans to file a Memo of Understanding, which will attempt to resolve the seeming conflict between FTC and FCC rules on predictive dialing and prerecorded messages, Cerasale added.
The DMA advises marketers to be extremely sensitive when telemarketing, even in the case of nonprofit or political calls. Furthermore, all phone reps should know how to add names to a specific company’s do-not-call list.
When making intrastate calls, the DMA recommends using both the state and federal do-not-call lists. For interstate calls, marketers only have to purchase the federal list.
Agents for nonprofit organizations will be exempt from the do-not-call lists, but joint programs on behalf of for-profit and nonprofit marketers won’t be. Companies should establish written compliance policies, train employees to follow the policies, and establish written paper trails verifying that employees have had the training, Cerasale continued.
Finally, the DMA plans to ask for reconsideration on issues pertaining to unsolicited fax advertising. Currently stated rules require explicit permission before sending faxes. Cerasale said that this would place a heavy burden on associations, which use faxes to correspond with their members.
Network
