New FCC rule mandates written permission before robocalls

Eagle Times Staff
CONCORD, NH — New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella has announced that, using input from a coalition of Attorneys General including New Hampshire, the Federal Communications Commission has amended a rule governing telemarketing communications to require individual businesses to obtain written consent from consumers before sending robotexts and making robocalls.

“The new one-on-one consent rule means consumers must affirmatively agree and ‘opt in’ before a business may sell their contact information,” said Attorney General Formella. “This rule is another step toward putting consumers in control of their information to help curb thousands of unsolicited robocalls and robotexts every year.”

Under the prior rule, lead generating businesses misled consumers who believed they were consenting to a single company’s telecommunications, only to receive, sometimes, hundreds of unwanted calls and text messages from industry competitors.

The FCC’s new rule requires “one-to-one consent,” which prevents lead generators from obtaining consent on behalf of multiple businesses or sellers. Attorney General Formella joined a bipartisan coalition of 29 Attorneys General in filing a letter with the FCC in June, urging the commission to enact the one-to-one consent requirement.

A common lead generation practice is to offer to give the consumer a quote for a good or service online (like insurance products), and in order to receive the quote, the consumer has to agree to receive calls and/or texts from the lead generator’s marketing partners. This often includes thousands of different businesses offering numerous different goods or services.

Businesses are only identified usually on a separate webpage only accessible via a hyperlink rather than listed outright for the consumer.

A copy of the AG’s June letter can be found at tinyurl.com/yzd3b8w9, and a copy of the FCC’s press release on the new one-to-one consent rule can be found at tinyurl.com/5n6unh9p.

The Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau investigates unfair, deceptive or unreasonable debt collection practices involving New Hampshire consumers.

To file a complaint with the New Hampshire Department of Justice, call the Consumer Protection Hotline at 888-468-4454 or file a complaint at https://www.doj.nh.gov/consumer/.