This post has two parts. The =second= is for people who are interested in the realities of the Do Not Call list. The =first= is for people who have difficulty understanding long explanations, but think the DNC list does not work.
1)
The DNC list is not a magic switch attached to your phone.
The DNC list is intended to help stop calls from legitimate telemarketers.
* Your calls were not from legitimate telemarketers.
* Therefore, the DNC list will not stop those calls.
2)
The DNC list does not automatically block calls. Instead, it provides a list of "do not call" phone numbers to legitimate, registered telemarketers who pay a fee for the list.
The DNC list exempts political callers, survey organizations, charities and companies with preexisting business relationships, but these organizations might have their own, internal Do Not Call list (ask them).
The DNC list is not effective against criminals, spammers and scammers, because those people do not subscribe to the DNC list, and do not care if you are on or off that list.
Its purpose is to stop calls from legitimate telemarketers, and it does a pretty good job at that. Just think ... if there were no DNC, you would be receiving incessant calls from BOTH legitimate and scam telemarketing callers!
Here is your reading assignment:
https://www.donotcall.gov/
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resource ... try/enforcement
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases ... lemarketers-pay
Remember, the Do Not Call site is a good one to report unwanted calls from LEGITIMATE telemarketers. The DNC list does not cover calls from criminal scammers & spammers. To report those, visit https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
If you receive calls even after reporting them (and waiting a sufficient time), then you should consider using a call blocker app, device or service as your first line of defense. Google "call blocker" to see such things at Amazon or other sites.
http://gg.gg/blockers
Minor adjustments to your thoughtful and mostly correct guidance ....
The simpler statement is that DNCR exempts any caller *not* selling or helping to sell a product or service. That caller set of course includes debt collectors. The "established business relationship" back door was all but welded shut in the October 2013 revision to the TCPA. Now a legal sales call relies on prior express written consent, which means we all need to be yet more cautious about fine print before we make or sign agreements with merchants.
I disagree semantically with the DNCR not "covering" illegal calls from determined criminal gangs. The DNC provisions in the Telemarketing Sales Rule apply the same to both honest and dishonest callers. When caught and sued by the FTC, violators get their faces rubbed in the TCPA, TSR, FTC Act, et al. It would be entirely fair to say that lawbreakers *make a choice* to disobey the mass consumer opt-out which the DNCR represents.
As ever, besides reporting and blocking, a private TCPA lawsuit is another option when the offender can be found domestically. Admittedly, this can be a tall order for the same technological reasons the scofflaws evade federal action, but now and again someone hits a bullseye and collects a nice damage award.
All of the above sadly may not apply in this thread, as an alleged "hero charity" caller was reported a day later.
I agree with most of your statements ... our differences show how a complex document can be interpreted differently by different folks.
>> Now a legal sales call relies on prior express written consent, <<
I believe the =new= "prior express" rule covers robocalls, but not human-dialed calls.
Please look at the table, here:
http://www.kleinmoynihan.com/publication/new- ... ctober-16-2013/
Yes, the DNC supposedly covers dishonest callers, but, as you said, that must be pursued by the FTC (Not the FCC, who issued the TCPA rules). So, reporting the dishonest caller to the FTC is the correct route, while reporting a "legitimate" telemarketer should be done on the FCC site.
So, we seem to agree, except for some alphabet stuff, and the difference in =what= dials the phone.
I see, your use of "coverage" was in the sense of proper complaint channels. No argument with the need to bark up the right trees.
I've read the same thing about a distinction between autodialed and manual calls, and I admit to shorthanding my remarks. We're not seeing a mad rush from any industry to dispose of labor-saving predictive dialers anyway. The laws have tended to disfavor machine control of telemarketing from the start, I suppose because it offers an unfair advantage against the comparatively underpowered consumer phones and leads naturally to abuse of the tool. We can be here a week filling in the cracks of the legal discussion, but here are a few dabs ...
TCPA defendants can still be stung for using equipment with autodialing *capacity*. How they do use it doesn't matter so much as how they could. Since corpo defendants don't like to lift the curtains on their operations, that vagueness has been critical to consumer plaintiffs stymied in discovery and in cases where a predictive dialer (automated) passes a call to a live rep (human control).
I also think there is room for liability if a call is manually dialed but the delivered voice is canned, soundboard-style like the Echo System "Amanda" persona made (in)famous by scofflaw commercial fundraisers.
I frankly expect any "manual dial" exception to be challenged one day. When you've told a sales drone to stop calling and the company persists, it's not going to make a difference in your blood pressure how the offending calls were dialed.
>> I frankly expect any "manual dial" exception to be challenged one day <<
Quite possibly.
Some call centers might not want to distinguish between a real person punching the digits on a phone pad, -vs- the same person punching ONE button to turn ON the autodialer or computer.
And, as you said, what happens if some grunt pushes a bunch of buttons, but a recording or computer takes over from then on...
Methinks, sometimes, the policies get too wrapped up in "legal-speak" and forget the realworld interpretation of the verbiage.
Both the FCC and FTC sites have online-fillable complaint forms, for irritated recipients of telemarketing calls. Takes time to fill in the "boilerplate" on those forms, so some folks might not want to complete them. Even after completion, the government folks wait until there is a "sufficiency of complaints" before they take action. Then, after three or four years of legal actions, after the culprit is found guilty and fined a large amount, the fine is reduced to the equivalent of pocket change, because the "defendant is unable to pay the entire amount". Basically, the fine does not even cover the government's cost in pursuing the matter.
Arg. You got me started again (grin). We agree on a lot of points. I wish there were better ways to educate the consumer. Hmmm. Since cigarette packs must have a specified warning, maybe the phone manufacturers could put warnings on consumer-purchased phones? (Another grin).