Bulmash spends hours ferreting out the names of telemarketing agencies that call his membership and protesting each time he receives telemarketing calls on his home phone. He has testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee and appeared on numerous television and radio shows. His crusade may seem like an exercise in frustration, but he says he tries to turn it into something that ”invigorates” him.
”Why should an entire society be victimized by a technology that`s out of control?” he asks. ”If we all stand back and do nothing, that`s exactly what they want us to do.
”Of course, they are a perfect target. They are out of control. They present themselves as open, and they pervert the facts. I tell them, `Most people don`t like to be telemarketed,` and they say, `Well, the telemarketing industry earns $435 billion a year.` They look at the money, they don`t look at the issue.
”I`m not doing this for me. I`m doing this for people like the Arizona woman who lives in a trailer park, who has emphysema and a heart condition and three (adult) children who are very concerned about her health. Every time the phone rings, she must go to the phone, and most of the times it rings, it turns out to be a telemarketing call.”
Joan Mullen, president of the American Telemarketing Association, says that ”the negative perceptions that outbound telemarketing is an intrusion I think are magnified (sic) by the fact that outbound telemarketing provides a service to the consumer and is profitable to businesses. It provides a service to people who are housebound-(they are) able to conduct business, purchase items, get information via telephone.
”With better education of telemarketers as to how the calls are handled, and the courtesy factor, et cetera, more targeting of lists-so that potential customers who would possibly have an interest in the particular product or service are called, rather than just random calling-I think that the telemarketing profession can continue to provide real service to the public.” Nevertheless, even businesses with an existing relationship with a customer can overdo it. ”I don`t need extra things to spend money on. I`m lucky I can pay my Diner`s Club bill,” one woman says. ”But I`ll bet they called me four times in the last 10 days, telling me what else I can do with my card, like signing up for life insurance.”
Since there are so many dual-income couples not at home during the day, the latest ploy is calling the office. ”I get half a dozen calls a day to my office from stockbrokers-the same firms a number of times,” says John Beslow of Northbrook. ”A very insistent, pushy approach. I try and come off polite with them, but if you`re polite, they`ll just keep you on the phone. Being rude goes against the grain a little bit. It`s a small office, and there`s no time for the secretary to screen calls.”
On the homefront, reports Michael Maggio, a public-relations executive,
”I get all kinds of calls from charities that want donations, although I don`t mind if it`s a charity I know and am working with.
”Then there are the callers who want to do a survey or give you a free gift. Whether it`s legitimate or not, you don`t want to answer a survey at 6:30 when your dinner is getting cold. Someone called wanting me to buy $500 worth of vitamins. What really bugs me are the credit-card companies. They call on Saturday and Sunday to sell you everything under the sun-credit-card protection, insurance. . . .”
People who have recently moved or have had a baby or are planning a wedding are routine fodder for list compilers and an onslaught of telephone solicitations. The industry calls it ”life-event marketing,” but consumers liken it to being under siege.
Everyone seems to agree that the worst thing are the ”robots,” or what the industry calls ADRMPS (Automatic Dialing Record Message Players)-equipment that often dials numbers randomly or sequentially. The sound of a voice saying ”hello” then activates a prerecorded message or, even more annoying, a recording of a voice saying ”please hold” and then another recorded message. Some equipment will not disconnect until the messages play out. This equipment also reaches into paging systems and cellular communications systems, causing confusion and inconvenience at subscribers` expense.
Not surprisingly, there`s enough negative feedback to spur regulatory legislation on both the state and national level.
Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar recently signed into law a bill regulating autodialers. The law prohibits autodialer calls between the hours of 9 p.m and 9 a.m. and numbers dialed by determination of ”successively increasing and decreasing integers.” It also requires that autodialers disconnect within 30 seconds after termination of the call. If a 30-second disconnection is not technically feasible, the law requires that a live operator state his name and affiliation and obtain consent to run the taped message.
However, calls made to a person with whom the solicitor has had a prior business relationship and calls placed on behalf of political, charitable, public-opinion polling, research survey or radio-television broadcast rating organizations are exempted.
The mushrooming pay-per-call industry-900-number services that range from adult-oriented phone lines to sports scores and stock quotes-also are coming under legislative scrutiny. Edgar signed into law a bill requiring disclosure of the costs and terms of 900-number service in advertising and in a message at the beginning of the phone connection.
Similarly, the Federal Communications Commission recently adopted new rules that will force 900-service providers to inform callers of the charges involved and give them a chance to hang up before incurring any. The commission will also require local phone companies to offer customers free blocking of calls to 900 numbers from their phones.
The regulations were crafted to address a number of consumer complaints about the 11-year-old 900-number industry, including what has been dubbed
”collect 900.” In this twist in telemarketing, a computer calls with an offer of information, merchandise or a service-for a price. The person called is told that to avoid a charge, press any number, a certain number or just hang up. However, if the instructions are not followed exactly or if they`re not followed quickly enough, charges are billed. The new FCC rules forbid telephone companies from carrying such calls.
An array of legislation is making its way through Congress aimed at protecting consumers from abuse and invasion of privacy. A bill proposed by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) would require the FCC to consider ways of ensuring telephone privacy. One option would be setting up a national ”Don`t call me” list that would allow consumers to avoid the millions of direct-marketing calls placed daily.
At press time the Senate was expected to vote on a bill sponsored by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) that would ban the use of autodialers for almost all calls to private homes, and the House of Representatives was expected to vote on the broader Markey telemarketing bill mandating a national ”Don`t call me” list.
Although the telemarketing industry, through its trade organizations, has not opposed outright the no-call-list concept, there is serious concern about its implementation.
”How to develop a national database, who pays for it, how often it is updated are among the issues that would need to be worked out,” the ATA`s Mullen says.
”One of the possibilities-and what we will probably end up supporting-is a regulation requiring that when anybody doing telemarketing gets a request or a demand from somebody they call to be taken off the list, that they have (a mechanism) in place to take them off the list,” says Richard Barton, senior vice-president for government affairs for the Direct Marketing Association.
”We have a telephone preference service with about three-quarters of a million names on it of people who don`t want to receive unsolicited telemarketing calls, and we distribute that list to all our members. We can probably get you off about 80 to 90 percent of all national telemarketing lists, but the problem that most people have with calls that really irritate them, however, doesn`t have to do with the big national companies but with local companies-your local aluminum-siding salesman and such. As a national service, we can`t stop that.”
Only one state, Florida, has addressed this problem with a statewide
”Don`t call me” list. Those who do not want to receive telephone solicitations register with the state department of agriculture and consumer services for a fee of $10. Telecommunication companies are required to purchase the list and refrain from calling the people on it.
Charitable organizations that make telephone solicitations are exempt, but they must register with the state of Florida, obtain a license and provide background information about how they spend donations.
For those with no governmental help in stopping unwanted calls, there is one technological advance that helps. The Walker Research Inc. survey on telemarketing found that more than half the households owning answering machines claim to use their machines to screen calls at one time or another. And ”smart” answering machines, which recognize preprogrammed numbers, make call screening even easier.
The Walker organization found that only about one in four households surveyed expressed an interest in acquiring such technology, and among those who would buy such technology, less than one-third said they would be likely to return a sales or fundraising call.
Also on the technological horizon is Caller Identification, which displays the phone number of the party placing a call. Consumers could use this option to screen out unwanted telemarketing calls. Businesses that solicit 800- and 900-number calls also use this technology, with the result that a caller often unknowingly reveals his phone number or even his address and consumer preferences.
A bill approved by a House of Representatives committee last summer would allow telephone users on a per-call basis to block disclosure of their phone numbers and would allow phone numbers to be used by businesses only for billing and collection or to carry out a caller`s order or request.
For his part, Private Citizen`s Bulmash intends to keep flinging stones at the Goliath telemarketing industry for as long as it takes. ”When I wrote that first letter to Illinois Bell in 1985, I wrote: `Please get back to me as soon as you can because I expect to continue this until I get the matter resolved,` ” he says. ”Those weren`t just the words of someone finishing a letter. They were exactly what I meant.”
HOW TO FIGHT BACK
For help in stemming the tide of telephone solicitations:
Private Citizen: For membership information, call 708-393-1555.
To place your name on the Direct Marketing Association`s ”Don`t call me” list write: Telephone Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, 11 W. 42nd St., P.O. Box 3861, New York, N.Y. 10163-3861. Send a complete name, address with zip code and telephone number, including area code.
To report fraud:
Call the Illinois Attorney General`s toll-free consumer hotline:
1-800-252-8666.
Or write to the Federal Trade Commission, Telemarketing Fraud, Room 200, 6th & Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580
