Combating Onsolicited Sales Calls: The Do-Not-Call Approach to Solving the Telemarketing Problem
![handle is hein.journals/jleg27 and id is 387 raw text is: Combating Unsolicited Sales Calls: The Do-Not-Call
Approach to Solving the Telemarketing Problem
I. INTRODUCTION
If you have a telephone in your home, it is likely you have been interrupted at a
highly inopportune moment by an overeager telemarketer's courtesy call.' You are in
good company-in 1990, Congress found that eighteen million Americans received
telephone solicitation pitches each day.2 While these calls generate substantial revenue3
for telemarketers and those who employ them, many homeowners consider them to be
anything but courteous.4 According to one journalist, unwanted calls ... have trans-
formed Alexander Graham Bell's marvelous invention into an instrument of torture in
1. See VS Maniam, Letter From America: Tightrope Walk for Bush, STATESMAN (India), Jan 23, 2001,
available in 2001 WL 4381410 (noting that the American Dialect Society chose courtesy call, meaning an
unsolicited call from a telemarketer, as the most euphemistic term of 2000 at its January 2001 meeting). In
using this terminology, commercial telephone solicitors would apparently have homeowners believe that
calling them just as they sit down to dinner is a great favor, for which consumers should be thankful. In an
episode of his NBC sitcom, however, comedian Jerry Seinfeld suggested otherwise. Consider the Seinfeld
method for dealing with telemarketers:
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Well, I...
[SEINFELD]: I'm sorry. Excuse me one second.
(PHONE RINGING)
Hello.
[TELEMARKETER]: Hi. Would you be interested in switching over to TMI long-distance ser-
vice?
SEINFELD: Oh, gee, I can't talk right now. Why don't you give me your home number and I'll
call you later?
(LAUGHTER)
[TELEMARKETER]: Well, I'm sorry. We're not allowed to do that.
SEINFELD: I guess you don't want people calling you at home.
[TELEMARKETER]: No.
SEINFELD: Well, now you know how I feel.
CNN Today: Several States Considering Legislation That Would Restrict Telemarketing (CNN television
broadcast, Jan. 12, 2001) (transcript available in LEXIS, News, Transcript # 0101121 1'3) [hereinafter CNN
Today].
2. See Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, Pub. L. No. 102-243, § 2(3), 105 Stat. 2394, 2394.
The entire Congressional Statement of Findings from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act is reprinted in a
note following the codified version of the Act. See 47 U.S.C. § 227 note (1994).
3. Telemarketing generated more than $612 billion in sales last year. See CNN Today, supra note 1 (cit-
ing industry sources).
4. Studies show that only 1% of the population likes to receive unsolicited calls and 69% of people find
telemarketing offensive. See Hilary B. Miller & Robert R. Biggerstaff, Application of the Telephone Consumer
Protection Act to Intrastate Telemarketing Calls and Faxes, 52 FED. COMM. L.J. 667, 686 (2000) (citations
omitted).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jleg27&div=21&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Combating Onsolicited Sales Calls: The Do-Not-Call Approach to Solving the Telemarketing Problem
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