Limitations to US Do-Not-Call registry

Limitations to US Do-Not-Call registry

Ms Noreen Bowden, 42, a voting rights advocate, stopped answering her home phone three years ago.

"I just let the answering machine take the call. My friends leave messages; telemarketers don't," she said.

She was getting between three and seven calls a day from telemarketers, many of them, she said, from scammers. All this despite her having signed up with the National Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registry in the United States.

Ms Bowden's sentiments are not unusual in the US today, where the registry first came into effect some 10 years ago.

Although there are signs that the law has curbed at least some phone spam - US$118 million (S$150 million) has been paid by errant telemarketing companies in civil penalties over the past decade - it certainly has not eliminated unwanted marketing calls.

And those who are familiar with the 10-year-old registry suggest that Singaporeans should not expect its own fledgling registry, launched on Jan 2, to guarantee peace on the phone lines.

Ms Lois Greisman, who heads the division of marketing practices at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - the US body that administers the registry - warned that while such a registry can rein in calls from legitimate companies that tend to follow the rules, it does not deal with those who break the law.

"It has had a great impact. And we definitely saw a reduction in calls when the registry started," she said.

"But fraudsters aren't going to pay money to access the registry, then download that list and not call people on it. Do-Not-Call is designed as a privacy protection, it is not an anti-fraud regulation."

The DNC registry law in the US was popular if controversial when it was first put in place in 2003, so much so that legal challenges hampered its full implementation until 2004. Today, there are 223 million numbers on the list in a country with about 800 million active numbers.

The American Teleservices Association filed a lawsuit against the FTC arguing that the curbs were akin to putting limits on what was constitutionally protected free speech.

But the courts disagreed, saying that if consumers decided they did not want to receive calls from telemarketing companies, this did not constitute a violation.

As is the case with Singapore, the exemptions proved to be the most unpopular with members of the public.

The US registry continued to allow calls from not-for-profit organisations, political organisations and businesses that had an existing relationship with customers.

Ms Chris Haerich, who is the vice-president of the Professional Association for Customer Engagement - the new name for the American Teleservices Association - was working in a company providing call centre services to firms when the regulations came into effect.

She said that the existing business relationship exemption was the one that drew the most complaints.

Her company received about 100 complaints in the first month the DNC registry was in effect, from people asking why they were still getting calls even though they had put their numbers on the list.

"The government did not do a good job of explaining to the people that there were exemptions... or explaining why there were such exemptions," she said, stressing that the exemptions are important to businesses.

The same view is held by the FTC, which makes clear that it is not trying to shut down the industry.

Said Ms Greisman: "I think it makes sense that, if I have done business with a company, I think it is reasonable to permit that business to call me as long as, if I say to that business, 'Don't ever call me again', and they abide by that. So basically, they get one crack at it."

The more complicated problem, she said, is how to deal with cases in which a customer has made an inquiry - such as filling in a loan application or test-driving a car - but has not yet bought anything from the business.

The law now allows businesses to call for up to three months.

But designing the regulations is just one part of it.

For Ms Haerich and Ms Greisman, the task now is how to keep the DNC registry up to date, in terms of what numbers are in the database and dealing with technological improvements that have enabled companies to make millions of calls using pre-recorded messages.

Ultimately, the aim of the regulation is to balance consumer privacy and business needs, they said.

"A lot of people have the perception that we are a boiler room operation, sitting in a basement somewhere dialling people. In reality, that is not the case," said Ms Haerich. "The people who work in this industry pay taxes just like everybody else."

Ms Greisman put it this way: "We do not want a regulation that is so onerous that it pushes businesses out of the ability to market to people who might be interested in their products. It's no good for business, and it's no good for customers."

jeremyau@sph.com.sg


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