Federal Trade Commission - Comment Form

Federal Trade Commission - Comment Form

The FTC is proposing a change to allow companies to call you with pre-recorded messages. The rule change specifies that recorded calls would be allowed only when an "established business relationship" exists, but provisions like that tend to be stretched to absurdity.



Federal Trade Commission
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
Subject Category: Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales
Docket Id: RIN 3084-0098
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 310
Published: November 15, 2004
Comments Due: Monday, January 10, 2005

How To Comment: The Commission invites interested persons to submit comments on a proposed amendment of the Telemarketing Sales Rule to create an additional call abandonment safe harbor to allow telemarketing calls that deliver a prerecorded message to consumers with whom the seller on whose behalf the calls are made has an established business relationship. In addition, the Commission seeks public comment on a petition submitted by the Direct Marketing Association to amend the TSR’s call abandonment safe harbor provision that currently requires use of "technology that ensures abandonment of no more than three (3) percent of all calls answered by a person, "measured per day per calling campaign" substituting the phrase "measured over a 30-day period.". Without limiting the scope of the issues on which it seeks comment, the Commission is particularly interested in receiving comments on the questions in Specific Issues for Comment (Section VIII of the NPRM). The Commission also seeks comment on the Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis contained in Regulatory Flexibility Act (Section VII of the NPRM).

Privacy & Use The FTC Act and other laws the Commission administers permit the collection of public comments to consider and use in this proceeding as appropriate. All timely and responsive public comments, whether filed in paper or electronic form, will be considered by the Commission, and will be available to the public on the FTC Web site, to the extent practicable, at www.ftc.gov. Any information placed in the following fields on this form -- "Title," "First Name," "Last Name," "Organization Name," "State," "Postal Code," "Country," "Comments," and "Attachment" -- will be publicly available on the FTC Web site. Although filling out this comment form is voluntary, the fields marked with an asterisk are required in order for the FTC to fully consider a particular comment. As a matter of discretion, the FTC makes every effort to remove home contact information for individuals from the public comments it receives before placing those comments on the FTC Web site. More information, including other routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, may be found in the FTC’s privacy policy, at www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.htm.