In Pa., residents must register again to stay on Do-Not-Call list

Ohioans don’t have to
re-register until at least
next July.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

Randy Richman of Bristolville sort of enjoyed toying with telemarketers when they would call his house.

For instance, when they would ask him survey questions, he would ask them a survey of his own.

“I would ask them as many questions as they would ask me,” Richman said with a grin.

Richman and his wife, Tawnia, got a lot of sales calls, they said, apparently because they were among the Americans who did not take advantage of the national Do-Not-Call registry that began in the summer of 2003.

The Richmans still would have gotten surveys and political advertisements, because those were still allowed under the Do-Not-Call law.

The political ads did bother them, Randy said, because they were generally recordings and would drag on for minutes.

“They were just horrible,” Randy said, adding that there were times when he would hang up on the them but find the call tying up his phone a minute or so later. “What if there was an emergency?” he said.

The couple stopped getting sales calls entirely about four months ago, they said, when they got rid of their land line phone and switched to cell phones only.

Most people don’t know all the rules that went along with the registry, such as the types of sales calls it prevented and allowed. But they also didn’t know something else — that it has an expiration date of five years from the date someone signed up.

In Pennsylvania, which created its own Do-Not-Call registry about a year before the national one, that expiration date is Saturday.Those who signed up for Pennsylvania’s registry during its first months must re-register by Saturday or face the possibility that sales calls will resume as early as Nov. 1.

For Ohioans, the first expirations will occur next July.

Ryan Lippe, spokesman for the Ohio Consumer’s Counsel, says Ohioans would be well advised to re-register now to beat the rush and avoid missing the deadline next summer.

Lippe explained some of the facts that many people don’t know:

UCalls for some types of organizations can still be made to people on the do not call list — for charities, religious groups, political organizations, political candidates, companies doing surveys, or companies with whom consumers have a business relationship. Businesses can call you for up to 18 months from your last purchase, payment or delivery. Companies with which you have made an inquiry or submitted an application can call for three months.

UNone of the exemptions matter if the consumer asks the callers to place their number on their internal do-not-call list. They are required to honor the request.

UTelemarketing to cell phones has always been illegal in most cases, but it doesn’t hurt to register those, as well as personal fax machines and pagers.

Steve Brubaker, vice president of InfoCision, an Akron-based company with call centers employing more than 1,000 workers in Austintown, Youngstown, Boardman and New Castle, Pa., said his company has always respected the requests of consumers.

“We think it makes sense to listen to what consumers asked,” he said. The company has been in business for 25 years and has always taken people off calling lists when they asked, he said.

Phone numbers change

Brubaker said it makes sense to require people to re-register after five years because many people move each year, meaning numbers on the registry are no longer owned by the same people.

Brubaker said he personally is not on the list because he doesn’t mind hearing what is on the telemarketing market. Anyone who doesn’t want to answer the phone doesn’t have to, he noted.

“I realize that if the phone rings while I’m eating dinner or with my kids, I just won’t answer the phone,” he said.

He added that Infocision’s business includes receiving calls for clients — as does the Niles call center for West Corporation — as well as making sales calls.

Michelle Gatchell, a spokesperson for the Ohio attorney general’s office, said legislation was approved in Ohio in 2004 that allowed for enforcement of the Do-Not-Call registry. Since then, some companies have been prosecuted for violating the law, but not many. Her office has records of 207 complaintslodged with the Ohio attorney general since 2003.

“It really did eliminate a lot of the telemarketing issues,” she said.

Part of the reason may be that the calls that are still allowed are more closely monitored than they used to be. Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission laws prevent telemarketers from:

UCalling before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.

UWithdrawing money from a person’s checking account.

UUsing recorded messages for telemarketing to consumers who do not have an established business relationship with the company.

UUsing a fax machine, computer or other device to send an unsolicited ad to a fax machine without the receiving the party’s prior consent.