Telemarketing Changes
Speech by Kevin Brennan – Cardiff West
Speech to Telephone Preference Service Forum (24th February 2005)
The issue of direct marketing calls from companies, particularly those that result in a silent call, is something that I have raised in the House of Commons on a number of occasions. In fact I first had an adjournment debate on the subject on 26th April 2002. More recently in November last year I introduced a bill to create an offence in respect of corporate nuisance telephone calls. The publicity surrounding the bill, which unfortunately ran out of Parliamentary time, resulted in the biggest response on any issue, including the war on Iraq, that I have had since being elected in 2001.
This issue was first brought to my attention by
constituents who were annoyed and sometimes worried by
these calls. When I first raised this issue
in the House I was surprised by the extent of the
problem. I received strong support from
colleagues from all parties and was inundated by calls
and letters from members of the public around the
country. I also received letters and calls from
people and organisations within the industry whom were
supportive of my stance.
I want to make it clear that unlike some, I have not called for unsolicited marketing calls to be made illegal. I accept that the industry is a legitimate and important one, but its methods are unacceptable and counter productive – even when the voluntary code of practice is adhered to. Let me explain why I say that.
I have a confession to make. When I was a small boy, my mates and I went through a brief period when we thought it was funny to knock on people’s front doors and run away. We even had a name for this game; we called it “knock out ginger”. I know from my parliamentary colleagues that the same game under different names is played across the UK.
It wasn’t funny really of course, just a bloody nuisance to those who had to answer the door to nothing but the sound of us scarpering around the corner – but small boys will be small boys and these days we’d probably be threatened with an ASBO and deserve it.
Now in those far off days, other people knocked at front doors in our area of South Wales. They still do. Legitimate door to door salesmen. The early equivalent of today’s telemarketing industry.
Imagine if they had been sent out with this instruction. Go down the street, knock all the doors quickly and go in the first one that answers – never mind if someone comes to the door and you’re not there.
That’s what today’s telemarketing industry does – it sets out deliberately, for its own convenience, to make millions of telephone calls every year which it knows will result in a game of telephonic “knock out ginger”. What industry or business in its right mind would set out deliberately to antagonise, irritate and alienate its potential customers to such an extent that over 100,000 of them per month complain and millions of them register to have no further contact from that industry.
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