(D-Maine)
As many reading this know, the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry was created by Congress to make it easier and more efficient for you to stop getting telemarketing calls you don’t want. You can register for free online or call toll-free, 1-888-382-1222 from the number you wish to register. But there have been rumors floating around the Internet and through spam emails that people’s registration on the DNC list will expire. A closer examination of the DNC registry proves that the rumors are partially true. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency that administers the registry, when the National DNC registry was developed, the Commission adopted a five-year re-registration mechanism and said that the list – which now contains more than 145 million phone numbers – would be periodically purged of disconnected or reassigned numbers. The FTC said that this was done to ensure that the registry was as accurate as possible.
Since the registry was created, however, the FTC has seen how successful it has been and how easy it is to clean up the list by scrubbing it of disconnected numbers. In fact, to the agency’s credit, they have recently stated that they will not allow the people’s registration on the list to elapse. They claim that they will accomplish this through agency rulemaking, but that hasn’t happened yet.
I appreciate the FTC’s willingness to administratively make this change. But in order to ensure that this is done in a timely and permanent manner, the House of Representatives passed two bipartisan bills this week that I strongly supported.
Combined, the bills do a number of important things. They would extend the FTC’s ability to collect fees to maintain the DNC registry. This is important because its authority to do this is set to expire at the end of 2007. But most importantly, the bills would eliminate the automatic removal of telephone numbers from the National DNC registry every five years. This means that people on the list will not have to re-register every five years.
In the end, I am pleased that both Congress and the FTC have come to the same conclusion: that an expiration date for the DNC list is pointless and puts more consumers at risk.
Do you remember what you did five years ago on this date? Of course not, neither do I. No matter how many articles are written and stories broadcast, millions won’t know that they need to take further action to keep their number on the DNC list.
If this change doesn’t make it through the Senate and to the President’s desk soon, 52 million numbers will be purged from the registry before September 30, 2008. Millions more would also be purged before the end of next year. I strongly urge the Senate to move quickly so this much needed consumer protection can be seamlessly maintained.
For more information or to list your number on the National DNC registry, visit their website at https://www.donotcall.gov.
