4 ms·
It would be nice if the author had laid out some examples of how telemarketing can be done correctly, without breaking any laws and risking this sort of respons
by _sentient 14y ago
It would be nice if the author had laid out some examples of how telemarketing can be done correctly, without breaking any laws and risking this sort of response.
Hopefully we will see a followup post that explains how Impact Dialing gets away with it, but I suspect that they benefit from all the fear and uncertainty.
- michaelrkn 14y agoHi Sentient. We actually mainly work with political campaigns, which are exempt from the regulations. I don't think we benefit from the uncertainty; it makes it difficult to explain to potential customers what is and isn't legal, and we turn away clients sometimes because they aren't familiar enough with the laws to know what's legal and what's not.
- thesis 14y agoPolitical robocall campaigns are absolutely NOT exempt in every state. It's kind of odd that you'd make the initial post about how people need to do robocalls right and then you make a blanket statement how political campaigns are exempt.
- michaelrkn 14y agoYou're right about robocalls, but we primarily deal in live phone calls, dialed by a computer but connected to a live person ("predictive dialing" or "power dialing"). These calls are almost always legal for political campaigns.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoDoes that smell like manipulation of the statute to benefit the politicians at the expense of the voters to everyone else or just me? If the populus don't want unsolicited calls when did the politicians decide that they should over rule them and what's the protection against this sort of action happening in more serious situations?
- jsprinkles 14y ago> Does that smell like manipulation of the statute That's called business.
- lrs 14y agoWhat sorts of policies and practices, if any, do you have in place to prevent your company or clients from engaging in the kind of behavior that you yourself found so personally objectionable that you sued for it?
- michaelrkn 14y agoOur Terms of Service require that customers be familiar with the relevant laws, abide by them, and take full responsibility for obeying them. Because we're a pretty small company, I also personally know all of our clients and talk with them about what they're doing. If it seems like they might be about to violate the law, we talk it through. This has only happened a couple times, but I have switched off somebody's account because I thought they were violating the law, despite the fact that they've taken full responsibility for compliance.
- dangrossman 14y agoIt's pretty simple. For calling residential numbers for marketing purposes: 1) Subscribe to the federal and state Do-Not-Call lists for each state you're going to call people in. Don't call anyone on those lists unless you have a business relationship with them. It's legal for Comcast to call you to upsell you to a better package if you're a Comcast customer, even if you're on the federal DNC list. 2) Keep a copy of your Do-Not-Call policy on file to provide to callers if they ask for it. 3) If a caller asks to be put on your Do-Not-Call list, do so and don't call them again. 4) Don't spoof your caller ID as anything but your business or the business you're calling on behalf of. I could've easily missed something, but that's the gist of what I got from reading the federal telemarketing acts. There's also lots of technical details on performance thresholds for predictive dialers and such, so that you don't get too many of those calls where you pick up and nobody is on the other end as the autodialer was too aggressive.
- michaelrkn 14y agoVery well put.