From the Associated Press story recently published in The New York Times -- Oh, and do note the exemptions noted near end of story.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- People pestered by telemarketers can
start signing up Friday for a national do-not-call list
intended to block most phone sales pitches.

Consumers can register for the free government service by
visiting the Web site http://www.donotcall.gov. Telephone registration using a toll-free number - 1-888-382-1222 -- is available in states west of the Mississippi River, including Minnesota and Louisiana, the Federal Trade
Commission said. Nationwide registration should be
available by July 7.
The national registry, an FTC project more than a year in
the making, was being inaugurated Friday at a White House
ceremony led by President Bush.
The list will block about 80 percent of telemarketing
calls, FTC Chairman Timothy Muris said. ``People own their homes and their phones and now they will have a choice about whether they want the calls,'' Muris said in an interview.

Telephone registration is being done in stages to ensure
the system can handle the volume of calls expected, the FTC
said. The commission expects up to 60 million phone numbers
to be registered in the first year.

``I think this has been a complaint of consumers for a very
long time,'' Federal Communications Commission Chairman
Michael Powell said on NBC's ``Today.'' ``This is a day
they've awaited for a long time.''

People who sign up this summer should see a decrease in
telemarketing calls after the FTC begins enforcing the
do-not-call list on Oct. 1, said Muris, who joined Powell
on NBC.

``We are going to assign dozens of people to enforce this
very important rule,'' Muris said.

Registrations will have to be renewed every five years.

On the Web site, people will have to provide the phone
number they want protected and an e-mail address to receive
confirmation. Consumers calling the toll-free number will
have to call from the telephone number they want to
register.

Telemarketers attempt up to 104 million calls every day,
according to the FCC.

The industry has said the registry will devastate their
business and has sued the FTC, saying the program amounts
to an unlawful restriction on free speech.

The FCC voted 5-0 Thursday to add its authority to the
do-not-call list, blocking telemarketing calls from within
a state -- the FTC could only police interstate calls --
and from industries whose calls the agency regulates,
including airlines, banks and telephone companies.

Of the states with do-not-call lists, 13 plan to add their
lists of 8.1 million numbers to the national registry this
summer, three have legislation pending to allow them to
share, and 11 will not share the information, the FTC said.
Consumers on state lists added to the national one need not
register again.

Beginning in September, telemarketers will have to check
the list every three months to see who doesn't want to be
called. Those who call listed people could be fined up to
$11,000 for each violation. Consumers would file complaints
to an automated phone or online system.

Exemptions from the list include calls from charities,pollsters and on behalf of politicians. Registered
consumers also can give written permission to get calls
from certain companies.

A company also may call someone on the no-call list if that
person has bought, leased or rented from the company within
the past 18 months. Telemarketers also may call people if
they have inquired about or applied for something from the
company during the past three months.

But consumers can avoid those calls by asking to be put on
an individual company's do-not-call list.

Congress authorized the FTC to collect up to $18.1 million
from telemarketers to pay the program's expenses in the
first year.
(red color and emphasis in bold added)

Already signed up. This is long, LONG overdue.


k

Do you know, this must be a US thang. I have only ever once received a cold-call on my home phone and that was three weeks ago. I guess it must be starting to take-off over here. [shudder-e]

I've had over a dozen in a single day and maybe two or three dozen over the course of a week. Only get about 3 to 5 a week now.

Most of the you try to say "Look, I'm not interested" but they keep on blabbing to keep you on the line. A former lying scumbag was on NPR day before yesterday talking about her ten year stint as a telemarketer - how rough her job was. "Oh, you just wouldn't believe how RUDE people were to her! You should feel HER pain."

The problem with this is that

1) It is EXTREMELY rude to call a person you do not know to discuss business with them when you have not been previously asked. If this woman had even a modicum of intelligence or integrity, she would at the very least say, "Well, I was extremely rude and disrespectful by calling someone I didn't know with some bit of stupidity, and THEN they were rude to me in return! Have you ever heard of anything so vile?"

2) My phone is for my convenience, not anyone else's. To presume otherwise is vile.

3) Answering machines and number revealing devices DO NOT HELP. When a person I know calls, I want it right then - I don't want to find out later that my wife had a flat tire and needs me. I don't want to get up to look at the number that's calling if it's not something that concerns me. These devices are useless to me.

If our telephone companies (and I used to work for one) weren't a bunch of lowlifes, we would at a very minimum be able to call these vermin back and tie up THEIR phone lines. Further, it ought to be 100% legal to demon dial their sorry carcasses. It's surely ethical, and it's only because the phone companies have either lied or bought the idiots in congress that this isn't legal.

My only problems with the new law are
1) there are exceptions and
2) there are no prison terms involved for violators.

k

I have only ever once received a cold-call on my home phone and that was three weeks ago

You are very lucky. I have copied below something I posted here about a month ago in response to a query:

'It is so bad that we bought a couple of 'caller display' 'phones - one upstairs one down so you don't break your neck trying to reach the 'phone - and the answer machine is permanently on. The cold calling nearly always comes from a call centre and shows up as 'number withheld' on the 'phone's screen, so we don't pick up the 'phone. They don't leave a message either; in fact they are cute enough so they can usually time it to cut the connection before the answer machine clicks in and costs them some money. There is the added advantage of being able to answer inconvenient callers at our leisure!'

There is a blocking service available in the UK through BT which we have now initiated and it does cut out call centres but not people calling from their own 'phones.

My son and his wife got me a wondeful gadget called The Butler. It plugs into the phone jack then you plug the phone into the gadget. When you press the * key a voice comes on - in a very proper British accent - "This is the Butler speaking, this residence does not accept unsolicited --- etc ---" winding up by saying I want to be removed from their list. According to current federal law if you ask they can't call for a year. Oh, and the gadget works on all extensions with the same number including cordless .
Only problem was that a telemarketer called me back and asked where I had gotten the Butler- she loved it! And -get this - wanted one for her home phone!
We had a thread ages ago about ways to frustrate telemarketers perhaps someone much cleverer than I can find and post link? !!

So, when are they going to do the same for spam?

Bingley

I am uniformly rude to telemarketers. I know that it's not the "done" thing, but I have found that if you tell them to fark off and not ring again, you get flagged on their systems and they don't call again. I must admit that it goes against the grain, but if people insist on interrupting your life to try to flog you their crap products, they have to take their chances!

I'd ask them "Could you hold a minute?", put the phone down, and run up their phone bill waiting for the 'off the hook' signal, yet, nobody seems to call anymore...

I have done that! My fantasy response, one I never tried, was to say how glad I was someone called me. It gets very lonely being locked up like I am, with only the voices to listen to, and then going off on a non-stop ramble about anything and everything, the more disjointed, the better. <EG>

Oh, Consuelo! You must do it. Strike a blow for all of us!

Connie has used the same tactic adopted by my Dad - well sort of, he hasn't been locked away yet!

On one memorable occassion he put on his syrupy sweet response to the woman caller. Lots of gushing responses about how grateful he was that she called; that he had all the time in the world to listen to her and so on.

It must have quite unsettling for the caller because she eventually hung up on him!! He and my mother were delighted at this and just about cried laughing. It only got better when the phone rang a minute or two later. Very brief call this time; the same woman but this time she only uttered one word, "Arsehole" before she hung. Talk about a win for the little people!!

stales

There is also another way to deal with this annoyance:
http://snurl.com/1s11

In the UK, there has been a scheme called the telephone preference service since 1999. There is also a fax preference service and a mail preference service. I assume this is what has been alluded to earlier .

Since I registered I have not had a single call or fax. It used to be the faxes trying to sell me Viagra at 2am, (when I assumed that it must be someone calling telling me that a relative was ill) that annoyed me most. My mother in law broke her spectacles one-day rushing to get a call that she thought might be important. That double-glazing sales rep cost her a fortune. I hardly get any direct mail now, other than from companies that I have requested information.

So if you have any similar kind of service in your area, I would strongly recommend joining it.
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tpsr/html/default.asp
http://www.fps-online.org.uk/fpsr/html/default.asp
http://www.fps-online.org.uk/mpsR/html/default.asp

...according to the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS)... complaints about the services also increased by 43 per cent to 11,572 - the highest ever level. ICSTIS put this down to the rise in unsolicited marketing or spam.

from In-store (The Magazine for Retail Marketing and Design) July edition