Thankfully, Marketing Industry Plan For 'Ringless Voicemail' Dies a Quiet Death...For Now
from the it's-our-god-given-right-to-annoy-you dept
So we've been talking the past month about a push by the marketing industry (a company by the name of "All About The Message," specifically) to exempt "ringless voicemail" from existing robocalling and privacy rules. Ringless voicemail lets a company leave a marketing or political message in your inbox without your phone ringing. But such technology is currently prohibited by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) , which prohibits such marketing efforts without the "prior express consent of the called party."
In its petition to the FCC (pdf), All About the Message tried to claim that the existing consumer protections on this front were "archaic," ringless voicemails shouldn't be included because they're not technically "calls," and that exempting ringless voicemail from these rules provided an "important public purpose:"
"A direct to voicemail service platform is not covered by the TCPA, and the use of direct to voicemail insertion technology does not “make a call” to a wireless phone number as contemplated by Section 227, of Title 47 of the U.S. Code. What is more, consumers are not charged for delivery of the voicemail communications. Further, from a broader policy perspective, the use of direct to voicemail technology serves an important public purpose. The act of depositing a voicemail on a voicemail service without dialing a consumers' cellular telephone line does not result in the kind of disruptions to a consumer’s life—dead air calls, calls interrupting consumers at inconvenient times, or delivery charges to consumers -- which the TCPA was designed to prevent.
The effort quickly then received the full-throated support of the US Chamber of Commerce, American Financial Services Association and the Republican National Committee, which in a supporting filing of its own (pdf) tried to claim that blocking this annoying effort would violate the First Amendment:
"Telephone outreach campaigns are a core part of political activism. Political organizations like the RNC use all manner of communications to discuss political and governmental issues and to solicit donations – including direct-to-voicemail messages. The Commission should tread carefully so as not to burden constitutionally protected political speech without a compelling interest.
The problem: at no point did any of these companies or organizations spend much time thinking about what consumers actually wanted, and they sure as hell didn't want their voicemail inboxes being filled up with spam. As a result, when the news wires began to issue reports on the ringless voicemail plan, consumers were quick to complain to the FCC and political leaders about the effort. All About the Message has since submitted a very short letter to the FCC stating they were pulling their petition from consideration, putting this latest attempt to annoy the hell out of you and your family to bed... for now.
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Filed Under: marketing, ringless voicemail, voicemail
Companies: fcc
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'Right to speak' does not equal 'Right to make others listen'
The Commission should tread carefully so as not to burden constitutionally protected political speech without a compelling interest.
The 'leaving messages isn't disrupting people's lives' issue was addressed and refuted the last time the issue came up, so I'll focus on this part.
Being prohibited from leaving messages that people don't want is not a violation of constitutional rights. The right to free speech does not include the right to force people to listen to you, and if someone has made it clear that they aren't interested in what you have to say then a rule saying you're not allowed to leave messages they don't want is not 'burdening constitutionally protected political speech'.
They can call and leave messages with people that have indicated that they are open to such, but leaving what amounts to political spam in the inboxes of people who have made clear their desire to avoid that sort of thing is something they do not, and should not, have a 'right' to do.
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That's what you think
Maybe they also figured out how to pass "voteless" laws...
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They have the cash to pay for lobbying groups, why not to run a mail/web campaign to get permission? This would solve the whole but people want us to annoy them problem.
I am disgusted with the push polling, "charities", political calls of all stripes. They made all of these loopholes, and color me shocked... people abuse them.
Also it is shocking they tried to pretend that a sudden voicemail notification wouldn't disrupt people. There is an amazing scam now where they call and hang up after 1 ring. The missed call notification suckers some people into calling the number back to see who was calling... the number is routed through a system that charges more than we charge prisoners for calls.
Its nifty they found a way to send voicemails without ringing our phones... shame they haven't put the same effort into ending Judy calling about my credit card or Microsoft telling me my computer warned them I had a virus or the IRS who need to be paid today or I go to jail...
Want us to stop thinking your business is a shitty cesspool?
Stop finding ways to get around the roadblocks people have setup to avoid you & end the loopholes that allow the worst of your kind to rip people off.
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I was pleased when Do Not Call stopped lapsing, requiring you to sign up again. But it seems less effective all the time.
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HOWEVER...
As much as this would have made >MY< life easier, there is only ONE way I would accept this.. and that was if we had a 'spam voicemail' service just like we have a 'spam e-mail' folder that is automatically cleared periodically, that doesn't charge consumers to access and listen to, and does not IN ANY WAY impact the normal voicemail inbox.
I'm sorry, but I remember the days of tape answering machines. The ones with the TINY casettes you used to record messages from people. Has anyone else ever listened to a full casette of junk looking for the ONE IMPORTANT MESSAGE YOU'VE BEEN EXPECTING only for it to cut off halfway through because the tape ran out? OMG no!
I'm sorry, but the idea is still very inconveniencing. ESPECIALLY for people who need to use their voicemail for work or important calls.
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In the words of David Canzi
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the current rules are better than the ones that were coming
I bet their volume of ringless voicemails next month is the same or higher than the volume last month.
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I would have no problem with ringless voicemail
Then I could easily change the "ringless voicemail" into a "deleted voicemail"
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Voicemail only
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Marketing
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Ringless Voicemail
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Ringless Voicemail
We've come this far by tackling these kinds of issues on daily basis and because of that, we're proudly giving Voicemail Services across the globe that is generating the most successful leads and is focusing on not generating any kind of spam. Our spam score is always very low and we keep it a good eye on that, because of this, our leads are more than happy and like to stay with us.
VoIP Terminator (www.voipterminator.com) is one of the top voicemail service providers in the United States, Bangladesh, India, Philippines, and Pakistan.
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Ringless Voicemail
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