Of the more than 60,000 calls we receive from consumers each year, complaints concerning telemarketing regularly top the list. Telemarketers use the telephone lines to sell everything from magazines and credit cards to furnaces and health club memberships. While some use the phone to raise money for legitimate charitable causes or to sell useful products, others are calling for less noble purposes. I ve designed this brochure to help you put telemarketers on hold permanently at your house. Dishonest businesses and con artists quickly learned that they could use telephones to defraud the public while avoiding any direct contact with their victims.
Senior citizens constitute approximately one-third of the victims of telemarketing fraud.
Fortunately, the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission have passed regulations that not only help check fraud but also limit the inconvenience of telemarketing activities in general. Telemarketers must tell you that the call is a sales call, the name of the seller, and what they are selling before they make their pitch. If it is a prize promotion, they must tell you that no purchase or payment is necessary to enter or win. It is illegal for telemarketers to misrepresent any information, including facts about their goods or services, earnings potential, profitability, risk or liquidity of an investment or the nature of a prize in a prize promotion scheme. Before you pay, the telemarketer must tell you the total cost of any goods and any restrictions on getting or using them, or that a sale is final or nonrefundable.