Telemarketers

The Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) prohibits deceptive and abusive telemarketing acts and practices. It establishes standards of conduct for telemarketing calls:

1. Telemarketers can't call you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.

2. Telemarketers must promptly tell you the identity of the seller or charitable organization and that the call is a sales call or a charitable solicitation.

3. Telemarketers must disclose all material information about the goods or services they are offering and the terms of the sale. They are prohibited from lying about any terms of their offer.

It’s illegal for a telemarketer to:

1. Ask you to pay with a cash-to-cash money transfer — like those from MoneyGram and Western Union

2. Ask you to pay by giving the PIN from a cash reload card like MoneyPak and Vanilla Reload

3. Ask for your bank account information to create a type of check that you never see or sign. Those checks are called “remotely created payment orders.”

4. Telemarketers are required to connect their call to a sales representative within two seconds of the consumer’s greeting. This will reduce the number of “dead air” or hang-up calls you get from telemarketers. These calls happen when telemarketers use automatic dialing equipment that reaches many numbers and staff aren’t available to answer all the calls. When that happens, a recorded message must play to let you know who’s calling and the number they’re calling from. The law prohibits a recorded sales pitch in a cold call. To give you time to answer the phone, the telemarketer may not hang up on an unanswered call before 15 seconds or four rings.

5. Telemarketers must transmit their telephone number and, if possible, their name, to your caller ID service. This protects your privacy, increases accountability on the telemarketer’s part and helps in law enforcement efforts.

6. Most businesses need your written permission before they can call you with prerecorded telemarketing messages, or “robocalls.” A business has to make it clear it’s asking to call you with robocalls. It can’t require you to agree to the robocalls in order to get any goods or services. If you agree, you have the right to change your mind.

7. Businesses using robocalls have to tell you at the beginning of the message how you can prevent future calls. They must provide an automated opt-out you can activate by voice or keypress throughout the call. If the message could be left on your voicemail or answering machine, businesses must provide a toll-free number at the beginning of the message that will connect to an automated opt-out system you can use any time.

8. Political calls, calls from certain healthcare providers and messages from a business contacting you to collect a debt also are permitted. So are prerecorded messages from banks, telephone carriers and charities.

9. Some prerecorded messages are permitted under these rules. For example, purely informational messages — to say your flight was cancelled, remind you of an appointment or tell you that school is opening late — are allowed as long as the business doesn’t use the call to promote the sale of any goods or services.

Consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls received increased from just under 3.6 million during FY 2015 to just over 5.3 million during FY 2016. Florida is one of the states that has filed the lowest number of complaints.