Complaints regarding unsolicited and unwanted telephonic communications such as telemarketing phone calls, faxes and pre-recorded messages have led to significant new federal and state laws and regulations to protect consumers and businesses from these abusive marketing practices. Similar laws and regulations exist or have been proposed in other countries, including Canada, Australia and every country in the European Union.
Certain regulations, such as the United States Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Telemarketing Sales Rules, require that a business maintain a list of telephone numbers for consumers who express a desire not to be solicited by telephone, known as a “Do-Not-Call” (DNC) list, and take appropriate measures to ensure that outgoing calls to telephone numbers on DNC lists are blocked. The DNC lists may include one or more lists specific to a particular business, as well as state-wide, national and industry-imposed lists such as the Direct Marketing Association Telephone Preference Service list. Other DNC regulations may define how, when, to whom and under what conditions consumers and businesses may be contacted. A single violation of a federal or state DNC regulation can result in a substantial fine.
Despite the existence of such laws and regulations, many violations occur and go unreported on a daily basis due to the often complicated effort required to file a complaint with the appropriate regulatory authority. In most cases the complaining party must file the complaint through a website by identifying the offending party, the complaining party, and the date and time of the violation. In practice, the process of having to know where to file the complaint, efficiently collecting the required information and taking the time to actually file the complaint, eliminates all but a very small percentage of viable and enforceable complaints. For example, the Federal Trade Commission typically waits for fifty complaints to accumulate before initiating an investigation. Based upon an estimate that less than 0.2% of all violations are ever reported, over 25,000 violations will have occurred before an investigation is ever initiated.