Inman News Features
The Federal Trade Commission has announced the final amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule, including the development of a national “do not call” registry.
The amendments include provisions that will crack down on unauthorized billing by telemarketers, impose tight new restrictions on the practice of “call abandonment” and will require telemarketers to transmit caller-ID information, according to the FTC.
A number of states have passed do-not-call list legislation since Florida enacted the first such law in 1987. And earlier this year Texas real estate agents managed to gain exemption from Texas’ do-not-call legislation, otherwise state’s real estate agents would have had to pay about $500 annually to receive a list, updated monthly, of do-not-call individuals, according to a previous Inman News report.
At the time Ron Walker, general counsel for the Texas Association of REALTORS, said that rather than fighting the state’s do-not-call legislation, the association and its members made a case for why the real estate industry differs from telemarketing companies that, for example, sell magazines.
A national do-not-call registry could have a negative effect on real estate practitioners’ farming techniques, depending on the specific wording in the regulation.
According to the FTC, the national do-not-call registry will begin accepting consumer registrations approximately four months after Congress approves funding for the project. Consumer will be able to register via the Internet or toll-free phone numbers that will be phased in by region.
Approximately two months after the completion of phased-in registration, telemarketers will be able to access the registry to “scrub” their call lists and a month after that the commission will begin enforcing the registry provisions.