Text Messaging Featured Article

We have all, at times, received calls from people trying to sell us products or services; often, like many other responders, we politely tell the telemarketer we were not interested and ask them not to call back. Clearly, that is not going to happen! In fact, phone owners repeatedly say they continue to be bothered by telemarketers that persist in order to gather information or try to continually promote/sell a product or service. Oftentimes, it is call center employees or marketing firms that place the calls, if not predictive dialers—a computer service that will place the calls automatically.

Telemarketers are obviously just doing their job, and they are trying different ways to reach out to potential customers. Now telemarketers have added text messaging to their arsenal of tools. As texting is a common part of our everyday lives and is a popular method of communicating on the go, it is seen also as an extremely viable option of promotional outreach.

The “National Do Not Call List and Registry,” established by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2003 to complement the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991, was designed to prohibit telemarketers from calling people who registered online and opted not to be called by solicitors. By law, telemarketers are not supposed to contact them, and are required to take the person off any call lists. Yet many are still complaining for unsolicited marketing contacts.

In Florida alone, the state receives some 18,000 calls a year from residents complaining about a telemarketer calling them, even though they signed up for the Do Not Call list, according to WEAR ABC Channel 3. As the news agency explains, it’s that “the changing technology is bringing new complaints from people whose privacy is being invaded.”

While the TCPA was updated last October to include text messages in the “opt-in” requirements for companies, it appears that some businesses continue to either find loopholes in the system or fail to comply with the new regulations.