Posts Tagged ‘national do not call registry’

Australian National Do Not Call Registry

December 26th, 2009

You can bet that telemarketing companies in Australia are wishing they had a company like Do Not Call Compliance at their disposal right now! Recent reports claim that the well-known Australian Communications and Media Authority group, known as the ACMA recently failed to adequately educate consumers on what the Do Not Call Registry is and how to successfully use it to discontinue receiving telemarketing or solicitous calls.

The Australian version of the National Do Not Call Registry is known as the Do Not Call Register, or the DNCR, and is fairly new to the country. The Do Not Call Register was put into effect in the spring of 2007. Since its inception, Australian statistics report that 3.83 million numbers have been registered to the Do Not Call Register, out of an estimated 20 million eligible numbers.

However, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has now come under scrutiny for apparently failing to educate consumers on how the Do Not Call Register works. This means that consumers who may want to register their numbers on the list, or who may have registered their numbers but are still receiving unwanted calls are unaware of how to resolve their problems. Clearly, while the Australian Do Not Call Register is a step in the right direction, there is still work to be done.

If you manage telephone marketing representatives who make sales calls to residential (non-business) consumers to solicit a product or service, or if you make those types of calls yourself, give Do Not Call Compliance a call today. We would be happy to scrub all of your call lists against the American National Do Not Call Registry, ensuring that all of your calls are fully Do Not Call compliant. Please call us at 800-930-7252 today; we look forward to hearing from you.

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Register with the National Do Not Call Registry

July 26th, 2009

Before picking up the phone and making your first or next solicitation call to a consumer, STOP and read this!

You must be registered with the National Do Not Call Registry (www.telemarketing.donotcall.gov) before making any solicitation calls in the United States to any consumer or “residence” pursuant to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 or you will be violating national do not call law and could possibly face hefty federal fines. In other words, if you desire to solicit or sell any product or service to a consumer via the telephone, you must carefully and consistently follow Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR).

If you are planning to sell or attempt to sell any type of product or service at any point to the consumer, even if you are not asking for the consumer to “sign on the dotted line” during the initial call, then yes, it is a sales call. If you plan on selling your product or service to the consumer at any point or time during or after your call to them, then yes, it is still considered a sales call.

Per the Federal Trade Commission, there are exemptions to this rule however for the following organization types:

  • calls from organizations with which you have an established business relationship;
  • calls for which you have given prior written permission;
  • calls which are not commercial or do not include unsolicited advertisements;
  • calls by or on behalf of tax-exempt non-profit organizations.

So unless you currently do business or have done business with the consumer within the past 18 months, have received written permission from the consumer, are calling a business or are calling from or on behalf of a tax-exempt organization like a charity, you must “scrub”, filter your lead list against the National Do Not Call Registry before picking up the phone to make any calls; and must only call those leads that are not on the National Do Not Call List or you are breaking the law.

Also, if a customer has asked to be placed on your “company specific” or “Internal Do Not Call List” then again, you are not allowed to call them ever; unless they have written to you and asked that their phone number be removed from your company’s “internal Do Not Call List”.

Although it can be a little overwhelming and in some cases a little costly, in the end, it is must more cost effective to just follow the National Do Not Call Law.

Sources:

FTC.gov. http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/donotcall/

Federal Trade Commission. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/alerts/alt129.shtm

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Do Not Call Scrubbing and Call Compliance Partner

July 20th, 2009

So you’ve been tasked with implementing a cost effective, results-yielding do not call list scrubbing and compliance management solution, and possibly your company’s entire outbound telephone, email or fax marketing campaign. Remember one of the most important things you can do is to partner with an experienced do not call list scrubbing and compliance management firm. The right firm will be essential in ensuring that your company is fully inoculated against probable exorbitant state and national do not call registry fines that often range from $11,000 to $16,000 along with the additional losses that often spur from Civil Investigative Demands (CID) by the federal government. Also, having a competent and thorough do not call list management firm in place will save you from probable missteps and headaches that are likely to occur when starting and maintaining an up-to-date do not call compliance solution for your company.

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