New USA FTC Telemarketing Sales Rules

[mflorell]

There are some new regulations that were recently announced by the FTC for telemarketing in the USA.

Here are some summary links and a link to the actual 111-page PDF of the official changes:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/31211

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10021092-38.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/domestic ... 7520080819

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/08/R411001tsrfrn.pdf

[Baylink]

The even further condensation is that a) FCC outlawed 1) prerecorded 2) sales calls to 3) consumers (starting in Sept 09; til then they must have a 'press 9' optout), and b) they've relaxed the 97% completion (to an agent, in 2 seconds or less) requirement on predictive calls by calculating it monthly instead of daily.

[mflorell]

Well, you got some of it right.

Prerecorded calls are outlawed unless you get written permission to do them from the customer. Many consumer credit companies last August started putting a clause into credit and loan agreements allowing them to do this, so we will not see the end of robo-dial collections calls any time soon.

As for the 3% drop rate(call is considered abandoned if not sent to agent after 2 seconds AFTER THE END OF THE CUSTOMER GREETING)

The drop rate is now to be calculated in 30-day time periods starting from the start of the campaign, not monthly.

[Baylink]

On the first point, I *did* say "sales".

And on the second, to quote the first story:

> Here though the FTC is making a more subtle change. While retaining the 97% requirement, it will now calculate call abandonment over a 30-day period, rather than on a daily basis as is now the case.

That seems pretty clear-cut to me.

Are you suggesting that Network World is incorrectly quoting the entire official PDF? (Which admittedly, I did not read...)