Consumer Inq

If you've been blissfully free from dinnertime interruptions by telemarketers for the last few years, I'll bet you a Florida time-share that I know the reason, and that it's not because the business suddenly vanished.

Your evenings are your own again because the government crackdown on unwelcome telemarketing worked. You added your number to the Pennsylvania Do Not Call list or to its counterpart in another state, or you joined the federal Do Not Call list, and telemarketers knew not to bother you.

Trust me: As sure as Mortgage Rates Have Never Been Lower! (well, surer), they're still calling sombody. I know this firsthand because, alone among my friends and acquaintances, I've never added my phone number to a do-not-call lists. Yes, keeping an ear on this often-smarmy business was a dirty job, but as a consumer writer I figured it was my duty. And thanks to my valiant sacrifice, I can assure you that lenders, vacation-deal peddlers, and home-improvement contractors are standing by, ready to call you first chance they get.

When might that be? Last week, the Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett began a campaign to renew the no-calls status for the first million phone numbers that were signed up as soon as the state's list became available in mid-2002. If you were one of the first to enroll your number, and you don't renew by Sept. 15th, Corbett said you could start getting calls in November. (To enroll or re-enroll online, click here.)

Do you need to re-up for the Pennsylvania list if you're also on the national Do Not Call list, which was started a year later?

That's not clear. The state and federal lists both should spare you from the same kinds of calls and carry the same kinds of exceptions – such as for companies with whom you have an existing business relationship, nonprofits, and political calls. So I called Corbett's office to ask.

The answer: "The reason to be on both is that you might benefit from enforcement on both," said spokesman Nils Frederiksen. "It’s double the protection, and you get a financial bonus if you file a complaint in Pennsylvania and we’re able to collect a fine from the company."

The AG's office says that since the law was enacted, it has filed 75 legal actions against telemarketers who have made calls violating it, and collected more than $800,000 in civil penalties. Under the law, a consumer whose complaint leads to a successful prosecution is entitled to 10 percent of the fine, up to $100 apiece.

Could I talk to someone who got a check from the state? Frederiksen put me in touch with Joann Brown of South Philadelphia, a restaurant hostess who reported an unwanted call from a company called Vacation Depot.

Violating the telemarketing rules wasn't necessarily the worst thing the company had done. In December, Corbett settled a year-old state lawsuit against the Michigan company behind Vacation Depot, which agreed to pay $15,000 in fines and in restitution to consumers it was accused of misleading.

According to state investigators, the company called consumers and told them they'd won a vacation or a motor vehicle. But to collect, they would first have to listen to a seminar about the Vacation Depot club.

Those who heard the pitch were promised they could save up to 40 percent on vacations, "including cruises, hotel rooms, car rentals and airline tickets," the AG's settlement announcement said. It said club memberships ranged in price from $2,453 to $6,453.

"In reality, many club members complained that the promised discounts just weren't there," Corbett said in the statement. "In one case, the vacation package offered by the defendants was $500 more than a similar package a consumer found on Expedia.com, an online travel service provider. In other cases, the company was unable to arrange the requested trips and services at all. Dissatisfied customers were then told that they could not cancel their memberships and get their money back."

Joanna Brown was one of the club's luckier – OK, smarter – potential victims. She got a call, reported it, and eventually got a $15 check – her share of the part of the penalty not used for direct restitution. Never messed with the company itself.

Clearly, a side-benefit of the Do Not Call laws are that it makes it easier for state and federal officials to nail telemarketers who play so close to the edge that they forget there is one. In Vacation Depot's case, more than 50 consumers complained that they got the company's calls even though they were on the Do Not Call list. Those allegations were a key part of the case against the company, which otherwise could rely heavily on the usual buyer-beware defense.

How have the feds done in comparison?

At the end of December, the federal Do Not Call list had 132 million numbers on it. The federal law allows a penalty of $11,000 per violation, well beyond Pennsylvania's limit of $1,000 per violation. On the other hand, Pennsylvania has already filed more than twice as many cases as the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the federal law.

As of Sept. 30, 2006, the FTC had filed 28 cases and settled 21 of them. But those 21 cases were clearly on a different scale than Pennsylvania's, generating more than $15 million in court-ordered penalties or redress, roughly half for do-not-call violations and half for other charges. (Want to read about its enforcement? Click here to read the FTC's annual report to Congress on the Do Not Call registry.)

The bottom line? Sign up for both lists, if only to encourage both the state and federal governments to continue enforcing the laws against marketing that crosses the line.

Someday, I just might join you. Maybe after I win the Florida time-share sweepstakes.

For instructions on renewing your Pennsylvania registration, click here.

For informationn and instructions about the federal law, click here.

The Bush administration put the fox in charge of the henhouse. It's tough to see it any other way when you read Sunday's excellent New York Times story detailing how officials with industry ties and anti-regulation ideology have derailed efforts to protect Americans, and especially America's children, from dangerous products.

In one of the sorriest examples, Eric Lipton tells how the head of the CPSC's poison prevention unit resigned after she was unable to require inexpensive child-resistant caps on a hair relaxer that had burned toddlers.

The reason? The White House wanted a cost-benefit analysis — even though poison control is one of the few circumstances where the agency can act without delay.

"We are talking one to two cents per package here for something that we know is toxic," said the former official, Suzanne Barone. "The other option is just to wait for more children to get hurt. It is just kind of sad."

Her conclusion was that the commission's attitude on oversight adds up to "buyer beware" — the every-consumer-for-himself regime that effective regulation is supposed to supplement. Caveat emptor has ancient roots. But it's not always sufficient for a modern marketplace full of complex, technological and often-hazardous products.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been a target of Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan was president, and President Bush has plainly been following the same script. But maybe the pendulum is about to swing again.

The recent, massive recalls of Chinese-made toys, pet food and other hazardous products are drawing attention to the special risks posed by imported consumer products. Here's one that may come as a shock: Our federal law's preference for so-called voluntary standards may be part of the problem, because Chinese manufacturers interpret voluntary as exactly that, according to Lipton's article.

"Time and again, through the translators, they made clear they did not understand this concept," according to an engineer who served as an aide to former Commission Chairman Harold D. Stratton. "What they told us was, ‘As far as we are concerned, voluntary means we don’t have to.'"

That's why some rules have to be mandatory — and one more reason that it's high time to fix this system.