With the General Election finally here, telephones have been ringing nonstop the past few days with automated messages from election candidates and political groups.
"Four out of five calls this morning were political calls," John Fox, Pottsville, said Monday at Fairlane Village mall. "I told my wife not to answer the phone anymore."
Also known as "robocalls," these automated messages are made by political parties as well as unaffiliated campaigns, 527 organizations, unions and individual citizens.
Fox said most of the calls he received start out with his name, pause, then a recorded message plays asking for his vote. He said some of the voices on the other end have been from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, and even Bob Barker.
"It's really heavy this year," Ed Shamonsky, Palo Alto, said at the mall Monday.
While he usually entertains the callers, often surprising them when he asks how they are doing, Shamonsky said he registered his number with the U.S. National Do Not Call Registry but the calls only stopped for about a week. He said the calls do not influence his vote.
"I made up my mind a long time ago," he said.
Political calls are actually exempt from the do-not-call registry along with those from charities, surveyors, insurance companies and other organizations with a pre-existing relationship, such as phone companies or banks. These examples are excluded from the Federal Trade Commission's definition of "telemarketer" as they do not try to sell a service or product.
The National Do Not Call Registry is managed by the Federal Trade Commission and includes more than 157 million phone numbers, according to the registry's website at www.donotcall.gov. To add your number to the registry, call 888-382-1222 from the phone you wish to register or visit the website.
The registry, however, gives out numbers for the right price.
According to the FTC's website at www.ftc.gov, the Do-Not-Call Fee Extension Act of 2007 set an annual fee for telemarketers to access the registry. In 2009, it was $54 for each area code of data or $14,850 for access to every area code in the registry. Since then, the fees have increased every fiscal year according to the rate of change of the consumer price index. Telemarketers can access the first five area codes for free and there are exempt organizations that can still access all the data at no charge.
In Pennsylvania, public utility companies are required to ensure that automated callers disclose a name, address and call-back phone number. Calls can also not be made before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. any day, according to the attorney general's website at www.attorneygeneral.gov.
People using cellphones are generally safer from robocalls.
FCC rules do not allow telemarkers to call cellphones without expressed consent or emergency purpose, according to www.fcc.gov.
Jason Meyer, Gordon, manager of Verizon's Precision Wireless at the mall, said more people have been switching to using only cellphones.
"They do it to get away from the telemarketers, that's one reason," Meyer said.
Cellphones give people more control over who calls them, he said, through caller ID and giving them the option to block numbers or send it right to voicemail in an instant.
He also said that unlike the FTC, Verizon Wireless does not publish or sell the numbers in its registry.
