Stop Calling Us

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You might think — or hope — that telemarketers would eventually run out of workers willing to endure constant rejection and abuse. Think again. Expanding global trade, combined with falling prices for international calls, has allowed telemarketers to move call centers to countries where more pliant employees line up for such work. "In the U.S., to work in a call center is not a very glorifying job," but in countries such as India and Mexico, the white-collar environment and relatively high wages have job applicants lining up, says Robert Fabro, president of Hispanic Call Centers, which oversees phone banks in 62 countries and specializes in reaching immigrant populations in the U.S.

Overbuilding in the telecommunications sector has slashed overseas cable costs as much as 80% since 1999, encouraging the flight overseas. Derek Holley, president of eTelecare, which owns call centers in the Philippines, says international lines that cost $40,000 a month in 1999 can be leased for about $7,000 today. The line quality has improved so much that his company can pack twice as many digitized calls, with better sound, into the same number of circuits. "Suddenly price wasn't a huge obstacle," he says, "and the world really was open."

Lately, the fight against telemarketers has shifted toward Washington and the state capitals, inspired by not only constituent complaints but also the personal experiences of lawmakers like Carl Carpenter. Back in 1987, Carpenter's mother Ruth suffered a stroke, making it almost impossible for her to talk. But she always wanted to hear from her adult children and excitedly answered when the phone rang in her small apartment in Plant City, Fla., east of Tampa. Trouble was, most of the calls were from telemarketers. She was finally driven to create a code for her family: whenever they called, they should let the phone ring three times, hang up and then call back.

Carpenter, then a member of the Florida house of representatives, led his state's 1989 adoption of a do-not-call plan in which phone companies were required to put an asterisk in the phone book beside the names of people who did not want to hear from telemarketers. This law was soon modified into a formal do-not-call list. But the law didn't completely shield Floridians because out-of-state telemarketers, often unaware of the list, continued to call. And Florida-based firms started annoying residents of neighboring Georgia — and helped inspire Georgians to pass their do-not-call law.

Politicians in other states have begun to realize how much voters hate telemarketing. In Indiana, attorney general Stephen Carter was elected with help from an ad that showed his daughter spilling milk on the dinner table as Carter is saying, "Not interested" to a sales caller. Carter pushed the state legislature to adopt a do-not-call list, for which more than a million Hoosiers have signed up. And he has aggressively prosecuted companies that call people on that list. Overall, states have collected more than $3 million in fines against telemarketers over the past four years.

Almost all the 20 states that don't have do-not-call laws are considering them. More than 15 million Americans have signed up for the lists, and states that have lists are seeking to strengthen them. Some, like Indiana, ban almost all telemarketing calls, but in most states, certain big industries, such as insurers, have been exempted. One idea being considered in the state legislatures and Congress is a so-called dinner-hour ban that would preclude any telemarketing calls in the early evening, even to people not on do-not-call lists. That includes the usual exemptions, such as the one for politicians, whose solicitations are protected by the First Amendment.

The law President Bush signed in March allots $16 million to set up a national do-not-call list. The law also instructs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt similar rules and make industries that the FCC regulates — banking, telecommunications and media — subscribe to the national list. The new federal rules, which took effect March 31, require telemarketers to display their phone numbers on caller-ID devices beginning early next year and also combat dead-air calls from autodialers.