Summary of the Report of

The House Interim Committee on Merchandising Practices

(No-Call Telemarketing)

Representative Ralph Monaco, Chair

November 2001

Effective July 1, 2001, the No-Call Law allows Missourians to reduce unwanted telemarketing calls to their homes. The state law prohibits telemarketers from calling households that have been added to the list, with some exceptions that have been written into the law. Missourians can register their home phone numbers for the No-Call List, which will be managed and enforced by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. The Committee reviewed existing telemarketing fraud and telemarketing no-call practices. The Committee also reviewed maintenance, operation, cost, and enforcement of the no-call data base.

The Committee upon review of the No-Call Law was impressed with the number of Missourians registering to be on the no-call list, but thought the four months the law has been in effect was too short a time to determine if the law’s exempted entities should be restricted from telemarketing in Missouri:

The Committee does, however, recommend:

· The acronym ADAD found in Section 407.1095 (3), RSMo, should be clarified and defined in statute. “ADAD” or “automatic dialing and announcing device” is defined in rule 15CSR60-13.010(2) (A) as any device or system which is used, whether alone or in conjunction with other equipment, for the purpose of automatically selecting or dialing telephone numbers and disseminating recorded messages to the numbers so selected.

· “Current business relationship” as found in Section 407.1095.(3) (b) and “established business relationship” as found in Section 407.1070 (4) should be reconciled under one definition in statute to avoid confusion.

· In Section 407.1095 (3) (b) “had a business contact within the past one hundred eighty days or” should be deleted from that subsection. The 180-day qualifier expands “current business or personal relationship” and makes the exception an ongoing exception, if contact of any kind can be documented. Deleting the 180-day qualifier would bring internal consistency to the law if the changes to “current business relationship” and “established business relationship” above are also adopted.

· Sanctions against entities exempted under the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Telemarketing Sales Rule, which provides for up to a $500 penalty as opposed to Missouri’s No-Call Law which provides for up to $5,000 penalties, should be increased to be consistent with Missouri’s No-Call Law. Further revisions, if any, to the FTC exemption should be revisited if after one more year of experience the Attorney General’s Office finds an increase in violations by entities exempted under FTC rules.