Earlier this week, the Minnesota Department of Commerce began accepting sign-ups for the states’s telemarketing do-not-call list. On the first day, almost 10%—more than 185,000—of the state’s residential telephone customers put their phone numbers on the list. And the law doesn’t go into effect until 1 January 2003.
Local media outlets quoted a Commerce Department spokesperson as saying that the response rate is more than double what had been estimated or projected.
Minnesota’s do-not-call list works by requiring telemarketers to buy the list each calendar quarter. The list will cost US$500 per year in 2003; US$360 in 2004; and US$300 each subsequent year. The penalty for placing calls to telephone numbers on the do-not-call list is a fine of US$1,000 per incident. Repeat offenders will be prohibited from all telemarketing in the state.
A provision in the Minnesota do-not-call list law (Minnesota Statutes 2002, Chapter 325E.311 – 316), prohibits telemarketers from using devices that disable Caller ID on telephone customers’ equipment. Similarly, telemarketers are required to immediately identify themselves and what they’re selling.
Predictably, there are several gaping loopholes in the Minnesota do-not-call list law. Political organizations, of course, are exempt from any restrictions. So are non-profit organizations and businesses with an existing relationship with the telephone customer. Most disturbingly, businesses that do not complete an actual sales transaction over the phone—including home repair services and mortgage companies; among the most aggressive of all telemarketers—are exempt from the do-not-call list law.
According to a report in the Minneapolis StarTribune, the telemarketers already have a strategy for routing around the do-not-call list by using the no-transaction closing loophole in the law. “Telemarketing has turned into a screening process,” a veteran telemarketer told the StarTribune, adding that “nearly three-quarters of his firm’s calls are to set sales appointments and do polls and surveys.”
Wisconsin’s do-not-call list is more restrictive, prohibiting telemarketing calls to numbers on the list regardless of when the transaction takes place. Wisconsin started accepting sign-ups from residential telephone customers in September and more than 720,000 Wisconsinites have added their phone numbers to the list in the last two months.
The problems with the Minnesota do-not-call list law spring from the object of the law: “to limit the number of unsolicited telemarketing calls made to Minnesota consumers.” The object of the law should have been to eliminate unsolicited telemarketing calls made to Minnesota consumers. The cheapest, most efficient way to implement such a law would have been to reverse the listing mechanism. Instead of forcing people who don’t want to be subjected to telemarketing to sign up, offer a sign-up list for those citizens who wish to receive such messages. In other words, implement an opt-in list instead of an opt-out list with loopholes. It’s a safe bet that before the first quarter of 2003 is out, some telemarketing firm or trade association will bring a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota for forcing them to purchase the opt-out list. Maybe then our elected representatives will get it right.
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