>At risk of this off-topic thread wandering even further off topic... >My state, Confusion -- er, Wisconsin, recently passed a law that >allows me to put my name on a list of those who don't want phone >solicitation. It's a State maintained list, and there are penalties >for violators. There are reasonable exceptions for non-profits and >organisations with whom one already has a relationship.
There are a number of states with these laws now. The problem with them is, they aren't terribly effective. I can sit here in NJ and call you in violation of the WI law, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. You can't fine me, and you can't seek criminal or civil charges against me. Why? Because the federal government has declared that doing so would interfere with interstate commerce, and that isn't allowed. So all that law has done is made telemarketers in WI call people that are not in WI, and subcontract their WI calls to someone in another state. And when all the states pass laws like this, and make it hard enough for telemarketers to keep track of where they can call at a given time... they will just pack up and move out of the county and promptly ignore all the US state laws (as many of them are already doing). And thanks to WorldCom lying thru their teeth about profits... they have driven the telco prices so low that telemarketers have a long way to go before they have to worry about not making a profit. (I currently pay 2.1 cents a minute on my leased lines... billed in 6 second incriments... the average "f-off" phone call lasts 10 seconds, so it costs me half a cent in phone charges and about another 2 cents in employee salary... and I am loosing business left and right to companies that have moved out of the US and pay far less in hourly wages... so you can imagine how little it costs some of these telemarketers to operate) Oh, and FYI: I don't work in telemarketing... I work in market research... but the operations of my phone center are pretty much 100% the same as that of telemarketing. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
