Enforce the National Do Not Call Registry Law

When the National Do Not Call Registry law went into affect 10 years ago, unsolicited sales calls to my number dropped from around 3 a day to nothing -- months or even years would go by between such calls. But in the last several years they've gradually increased, and now they're about where they were before the law went into affect. I can usually count on at least 3 a day.

I checked to make sure my number is still on the Registry, and it is.

From what I've read, the problem is that there is almost no enforcement. There have been rare cases of it being enforced, but for the most part telemarketers can ignore the law with impunity, and they seem to know it. Some of them even get sarcastic and condescending when I point out that the number they called is on the National Do Not Call Registry. They know they're breaking the law, and they don't care because there are no consequences.

Others are ignorant. I spoke at length to one who had never heard of the law, and after I described it, thought that her call didn't break the law for two reasons: (1) She had been trained to make these calls as part of her study to get licensed to sell real estate, and (2) it wasn't strictly speaking a sales call; she had called to ask if I knew about recent home sales in my area and did I want to sell etc. I explained that as a federal law it wasn't necessarily part of any real estate training, and that the law didn't exclude only sales calls. 

To be sure, the law does make exceptions. The main ones are for politicians, charitable organizations, and surveys, though I'd certainly prefer to be able to opt out of those calls too. There is no exception in the law for businesses making informational cold calls, and the law doesn't allow pretending to be calling for a politician, charitable organization, or survey, only to segue into disallowed conversation. Asking questions doesn't protect a business caller under the survey exception.

Maybe it would help if more people wrote their senators and representatives about enforcing the "National Do Not Call Registry" law. It's easy to look them up on the Web and send them a quick note. I did so for my senators and representative. If you're tired of unsolicited sales calls, I suggest doing the same.

Telemarketers have access to the list so they can comply with the law by removing the numbers from their own lists before calling. But with virtually no enforcement, there may be an incentive for them to use the "Do Not Call" list as specifically the numbers to call, since those numbers have probably not been called as heavily as numbers not on the list.