Beginning January 1, 2005, the Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) will require telemarketers to access the national Do Not Call registry and purge newly-registered numbers from their call lists every 31 days. The TSR currently requires telemarketers to “scrub” their lists quarterly, but the FTC amended the rule in March 2004.
Monthly updates for telemarketers will be available free at https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov. Telemarketers are required annually to renew their subscriptions to the Do Not Call Registry at a fee of $40 per area code, with a maximum fee of $11,000 for any company accessing 280 area codes or more. Companies may access the first five area codes of data for free. The Do Not Call Web site for telemarketers will inform them when their subscription account numbers expire and provide renewal instructions.
To date, consumers have registered approximately 81 million home and cell telephone numbers on the year-old list.
Significance: The Do Not Call list has proved wildly popular with consumers (if not with telemarketers). This latest requirement adds yet another administrative task to telemarketers seeking to comply with the government’s ever-growing list of rules.