The Federal Commerce Fee issued two notices this week in regards to the Telemarketing Gross sales Rule (TSR)—an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) and a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR). Each notices tackle the TSR’s exemption of business-to-business (B2B) telemarketing calls. The FTC issued the brand new notices following its overview of feedback obtained in response to the regulatory overview of the TSR it initiated in 2014. Feedback on every discover will likely be due no later than 60 days after the date it’s revealed within the Federal Register.
ANPR. The TSR at present exempts phone calls between a telemarketer and “any enterprise to induce the acquisition of products or companies or a charitable contribution by the enterprise,” often known as the B2B exception. The B2B exception doesn’t apply to calls to market the retail sale of nondurable workplace or cleansing provides.
Within the ANPR, the FTC seeks touch upon whether or not (1) the B2B exemption ought to be repealed in its entirety, (2) the exemption ought to be partially repealed in order that solely particular provisions of the TSR would apply to B2B telemarketing, or (3) the exemption ought to be partially repealed in order that the TSR applies to a subset of B2B telemarketing based mostly on, for instance, the actual good or service supplied on the market. To clarify why an growth of TSR protection to B2B telemarketing calls could also be warranted, the FTC factors to adjustments within the digital market which have led to extra misleading advertising schemes focusing on small companies. It additionally factors to the escalating probability that B2B telemarketing advertising calls will impinge on the privateness of a client’s dwelling because of extra folks working from dwelling.
The ANPR features a collection of questions in regards to the potential advantages to folks and companies from repealing the B2B exception and a collection of questions in regards to the potential burden to telemarketers and sellers from repealing the exception.
The opposite two points on which the FTC seeks remark within the ANPR are:
- Whether or not the FTC ought to (1) add tech assist companies to the record of products or companies to which the inbound telemarketing exemptions don’t apply, (2) repeal the exemption just for normal media commercials that induce inbound telemarketing of tech assist companies however retain the exemption for junk mail solicitation, or (3) repeal the exemption in its entirety topic to an exemption for sellers who manufacture the pc at difficulty and with whom the buyer has an ongoing enterprise relationship. (The TSR typically exempts inbound calls responding to media promoting, with some particular exemptions.)
- Whether or not the TSR ought to require negative-option sellers to offer shoppers with reminders of adverse choice packages and easy cancellation strategies.
For every of those two points, the ANPR features a collection of questions.
NPR. Within the NPR, the FTC proposes the next revisions to the TSR:
- Requiring sellers and telemarketers to retain the next new classes of data: (1) a duplicate of every distinctive recorded message, (2) name element data of telemarketing campaigns, (3) data adequate to point out {that a} vendor has a longtime enterprise relationship with a client, (4) data adequate to point out a client is a earlier donor to a selected charitable group, (5) data of the service suppliers {that a} telemarketer makes use of to ship outbound calls, (6) data of a vendor or charitable group’s entity-specific do-not-call registries, and (7) data of the FTC’s Do-Not- Name Registry that had been used to make sure compliance with the TSR.
- Modifications of present recordkeeping necessities, together with altering the time interval that sellers and telemarketers should maintain data from two years to 5 years, and clarifying that the failure to maintain every document required by the TSR is a separate violation of the TSR.
- Narrowing the B2B exception to require B2B telemarketing calls to adjust to the TSR provisions that prohibit misrepresentations and false or deceptive statements.
- The addition of a definition for the time period “earlier donor” and a number of other corrections.
