Does anyone know if there is a law against automated sales calls? I have an unlisted home phone number, and I've never had any problem with unsolicited calls. But recently, one company has been leaving recorded sales messages on my telephone answering machine. Before I call the company to complain (like they would care anyway), I'd like to know if there is any law against what they are doing? (Side note - I never signed on to the "no-phone-call" list, because I wasn't getting any calls anyway. And I had a suspicion that the list would be a valuable gift to automated phone sales banks, that would call anyway.)
Here's a description of the FCC's rules on telemarketing calls. http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/tcpa.html Autodialers are not illegal, but if you call the company and tell them to stop calling you, they have to stop it. It's best to use this exact phrase: "Put me on your do not call list." If you just ask them to take you off their list, they may take you off one list but still have your number on several other lists, so you can continue to get unwanted calls. But they are required to keep a "do not call" list and use it to scrub numbers from whatever list they happen to be using at the time.
Add yourself to the registry: https://www.donotcall.gov/ If you are on the registry, no one except for people you do business with can call. i.e, if you have Verizon service, Verizon can call you. After you register, it takes a couple of weeks to kick in. After a month, you can report numbers that are still calling you.
Whether you are on the registry or not, and whether or not you have ever given a business permission to contact you, you can tell a specific business to put you on their do not call list, and they are not allowed to call you any more. Of course, that does not apply if you have an existing business relationship - your doctor's office or the electric company can call you about your bill, for example, even if you tell them not to. AL, I understand your concerns about the do not call list being a gift to telemarketers, but I think the penalties are severe enough to prevent that. I signed up as soon as it was available, and got no telemarketing calls for two or three years. Then suddenly, I started getting them again, and when I looked into it, I found that if you change anything about your telephone service, your name comes off the list. I had simply canceled a long distance service that was part of a package with Sprint, and failed to re-register my number. Now I have only a cell phone, no landline, so I don't get any telemarketing calls.
Telemarketing with recorded messages is usually illegal in North Carolina. But, in this situation, if the recorded message is played to the answering machine, it probably doesn't qualify. If you (a real person) answer the phone and a recorded telemarketing message plays, that's definitely illegal: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_75/GS_75-104.html If you tell a bill collector to stop calling, they have to stop calling. But that's in the federal debt collection laws, not telemarketing.
Thanks for the link to the state law. I think the part about telling a bill collector to stop calling only applies to calling you at work, and requires that you provide another number where you can be reached at reasonable times. If I can find that, I will post a link, either way. ETA: Well, that was easy. Here's a link to the FTC brochure describing your rights: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/fdc.shtm I think we were both partly right about the debt collectors. This is what I was thinking of: and here's the part that says you can tell them not to contact you: Note, you do have to tell them in writing, and they can still sue you on the debt. There's a lot of good information at that link for anyone having problems with a bill collector.
No, it's all-encompassing. If you tell a bill collector not to call you anywhere for any reason, they can't call you, period. All they can do is send mail... or sue you.
I got an unlisted number from TWC, unfortunately they gave my number to everybody. What was the point?
Do you know they gave it out? I've had a Vonage number for years, and only in the past few weeks started getting some sales calls. I wonder if a telemarketing firm figures out "oh, everything that starts with 919-xxx is a Vonage or TWC phone", and they just start going down the list, in sequential order. If someone found out that TWC or Vonage gave out the numbers, I bet there'd be some hellacious fallout...
