New phone rules to curtail 'cold calling' by sales firms

MichelRichmont

Good news re annoying sales calls, my office is constantly plagued by people calling from Ireland and overseas by people selling anything from trees, shares in porn companies, gold, herbal remedies....and I am an architect!
Where these people get my number I don´t know.
I posted a while back re the Prime Forestry Group, a particularly unusual outfit....they were calling a lot last year, has anyone heard of them recently??



New phone rules to curtail 'cold calling' by sales firms



The modern scourge of "cold calling" by direct marketing firms will be severely curtailed from next week as tough new regulations are finally introduced by the telecoms industry, Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter.

The regulations will enable all telephone customers to register their preference not to receive calls from companies attempting to sell goods and services to them without their prior permission.

Under the new system, companies that continue to cold call customers who have registered their preference not to receive unsolicited marketing pitches could face fines of up to €3,000 per call.

The regulations, which are being introduced by the data protection commissioner and the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), chaired by Isolde Goggin, will be advertised this month to consumers via a national campaign.

Over the next few weeks consumers will be given the option to opt out of direct marketing calls by their own fixed line telephone company such as Eircom, BT Ireland or Smart Telecom.

To opt out of receiving direct marketing calls consumers must call their telephone provider and leave a recorded message of their preference to ban firms from contacting them.

The customer preferences to opt out of receiving direct marketing will be added to the Republic's national directory database, a list of all Irish telephone numbers that is controlled by Eircom.

Direct marketing companies will then have to access a portion of this database to ensure that they do not cold call customers that have opted out. The firms will be allowed a 28-day grace period from the time a customer signs up to the opt-out register before the ban on cold calling is introduced, according to a draft of the new regulations sent to telephone companies last week.

About 80,000 people have already registered to opt out of cold calls following the passage of legislation on the issue in 2002. But until now, telemarketing firms have not been obliged to consult the register and faced no financial penalty if they contacted people on it.

If customers that have joined the register continue to receive unsolicited calls from companies they can make a complaint to the data protection commissioner, who can then investigate and prosecute the errant company.

Cold calling by direct marketing firms has become a major consumer issue in recent years in the Republic and abroad. Earlier this year the director of consumer affairs warned people to beware of free holiday offers after an upsurge of unsolicited telephone offers by American and British holiday firms.

A similar opt out system for cold calling has been in place in Britain since 1999 and the register has now attracted more than eight million telephone numbers.

Merrion

As soon as you realise its a sales call say "I'm sorry, my company only buys products and services from an approved supplier list. If you wish to be added to that list please send your sales details to ..ficticous name and address..."

That way you waste more of their time than they waste of yours.

MichelRichmont

good tip, however I found that many of them had ways of getting past my receptionist and attempting to pitch personal investments, using my business address to contact me.
Quite insidious you know, especially if they then call you at home :mad:

dahamsta

I've been seriously thinking of setting up an Asterisk PBX to deal with, among other things, calls that come in sans caller id (the majority of which are sales calls). All I'm short is a way of differentiating between potential clients with called id switched off and sales droids, otherwise I could push the droid into IVR roundabout hell and cost them a few quid into the bargain...

"Press 1 if you would like the company credit card number, now."

adam

seamus

And instantaneously a generation of students are put out of work.

I just tell them the person they're looking for is busy (usually "Head of your IT purchasing please") and they'll call them back. Click the keys while they talk to make it appear like I'm taking down what they say.