Telemarketing Blog

Those aggravating automated telemarketing calls will be interrupting your dinner a lot less often. After receiving thousands of complaints from consumers, the Federal Communications Commission clamped down Wednesday on unwanted robo-calling by approving sweeping changes to its telemarketing rules for wireline and mobile phones. Even with the national Do Not Call Registry in effect — the initial effort to block those pesky calls — telemarketers have found ways around the…

Justices disagreed on whether lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act should be filed in federal or state courts, but they agreed that the law was odd.

Plenty of people rely on a quick glance at their phone’s caller ID screen to decide whether a call is worth picking up. But caller ID is not foolproof. Regulators in many states have been hearing increasing numbers of complaints about spoofing.

Regulators are hearing more complaints about “caller ID spoofing” or “call laundering” by telemarketers.

Federal law protects cellphone customers from receiving automated calls without consent, but the government and industry groups want to change what “consent” means.

A federal court in Chicago issued a restraining order on Friday against three companies accused of aggressively making automated calls to sell car warranties across the country, the Federal Trade Commission announced. Skip to next paragraphAdd to PortfolioTranscontinental Incorporated Go to your Portfolio » The order, which also froze the companies’ assets, came in response to a lawsuit filed by the commission on Wednesday.In legal filings, the commission said the robocall campaigns had brought in $10 million in sales as a result of the calls and mailings, which falsely gave people the impression that their car warranties were expiring. The companies systematically dialed random numbers across the country, violating the National Do Not Call Registry, the commission said.

If Google search revolutionized the Web, and Gmail revolutionized free e-mail, then one thing’s for sure: Google Voice, unveiled Thursday, will revolutionize telephones. Skip to next paragraphRelated Googles Free Phone Manager Could Threaten a Variety of Services (March 12, 2009) Pogue’s PostsThe latest in technology from the Times’s David Pogue.Go to Pogue’s Posts It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens. And that’s just the warm-up.Google Voice began life in 2005 as something called GrandCentral.

Only about 39 cents of each dollar raised by commercial telemarketing companies for charities in New York State reaches the designated charities, a report by the attorney general found.

LAST weekend, Lindley Ross was watching “Batman Returns” on cable when he was ambushed. Skip to next paragraphEnlarge This Image Illustration by Gary Hallgren It wasn’t the Penguin or any other criminal mastermind — it was the deafening volume of the commercials that played during the movie. “It bothers me. You’re watching a movie, you’re absorbed in it, and next thing you know, you get caught by surprise. I had to get up, find the remote and turn down the volume,” he says.No one is denying that advertising is a part of life

Word comes from Madison, Wis., that a telemarketer named Ted Zoromski quit his job this week over John McCain’s message. Skip to next paragraphTony Cenicola/The New York Times Gail Collins Go to Columnist Page The Conversation Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race.All Conversations Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican. But when he got the script saying “you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” he packed it in. “Even though I was paid to do it, I didn’t feel comfortable,” Zoromski told WKOW-TV