The home telephone numbers of 11 top executives of the Direct Marketing Association are on the federal do-not-call registry, which would make them off-limits to annoying sales calls.
The DMA executives who apparently have signed up to protect their own privacy did so even as their organization waged a bitter court battle to prevent federal regulators from blocking telemarketers’ calls to millions of Americans.
Also, top executives from two large telemarketing companies are among the 50 million numbers on the Federal Trade Commission’s do-not-call list, according to an analysis by the Hartford Courant.
“Here we have an industry that, essentially, sued 50 million Americans in order to protect its own stream of income,” said consumer activist Bob Bulmash said. “But when it comes home to them, they don’t want the calls either.”
Included on the list are two DMA senior vice presidents, three vice presidents and four directors.
Jerry Cerasale, a DMA senior vice president, confirmed that his home number is on the FTC’s list. But he insisted he did not register, and that he does not believe his wife signed up either.
“Somebody is obviously trying to embarrass me,” he said. “This is one of the reasons we’ve been against the Internet sign-up. Anybody could put your number on the list. I don’t know if the FTC has controls on this.”
A different DMA spokesman had another explanation. Louis Mastria said some telemarketing industry insiders put their home numbers on the list as an experiment, so they can judge for themselves whether it makes any “perceptible difference” in the number of sales calls they receive.
Also on the list is the home number of a DMA executive who works closely with the company president.
“I registered there myself,” the executive said Tuesday afternoon, “for the same reason that other consumers have. I don’t want to be bothered by telemarketing calls.” The executive asked not to be identified for fear of being fired.
The DMA went to federal court on behalf of its 5,000 member organizations last week trying to block new rules that would force telemarketers to make sure a number is not on the registry before dialing with their sales pitches.
The DMA’s legal arguments won a postponement from judges in Oklahoma and Colorado. But following a storm of bad publicity, and a subsequent act of Congress empowering federal regulators to impose the do-not-call list over those legal objections, the DMA said it will ask its members to honor the list.
The list will go into effect Wednesday, and U.S. regulators said they will enforce it as best they can.
People with numbers already registered are likely to see a decrease in calls, but due to the court action, protection is uncertain. The complex legal battle is expected to drag into 2004.
Among telemarketing industry insiders whose home numbers are in the no-call database are Thomas B. Barker, president and CEO of West Corp.
A call to his home in Omaha was not returned Monday evening, and Barker did not return a call to his office Tuesday.
Steven G. Rolls, chief financial officer for Convergys Corp. in Cincinnati, also did not return a call to his home–made around the dinner hour–for comment.
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Convergys spokesman John Pratt said he sees nothing odd about Rolls being on the do-not-call list, as the company’s business has evolved to emphasize customer service calls.
The 50,000 “outbound” sales calls that Convergys makes each day are done out of a sense of obligation to its corporate customers, Pratt said. “Take DirecTV, for example. If every now and then they ask us to make [sales] calls, we can’t tell them no, because they are such a large client,” Pratt said.
The Courant searched public records for the home phone numbers of telemarketing industry insiders, then entered the numbers into a page on the FTC’s Web site that allows visitors to verify whether the number has been registered.