The Sentinel, a publication of the SMP Resource Center www.smpresource.org February 2016 What to Know About the Updated Telemarketing Sales Rule
By Todd M. Kossow
Acting Director, FTC Midwest Region
ere’s the scenario: A person gets a call from a telemarketer selling a fancy piece of durable medical H equipment and, after talking, decides to buy it. That’s when the telemarketer asks the person to wire money for payment, specifying cash pickup. Should he do it?
Since you work with the Senior Medicare Patrol, you know – and share – the answer: No way. Don’t send the money. If you wire money, you can’t get it back. But now, thanks to recent changes to the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), you can take that a step further and tell beneficiaries it’s just plain illegal.
What else is new under the updated rule? When it comes to payment methods:
It is against the law for callers to ask people to pay with a cash-to-cash money transfer (like Western Union or MoneyGram).
It’s also illegal for them to ask people to pay with a “reload” card, used to load money on a prepaid debit card.
It’s a violation of the new TSR for a telemarketer to use someone’s bank account number to withdraw funds by creating a check or payment order – something that takes place behind the scenes, where people don’t know it’s happening. Unless someone has done business with a company before, giving out their bank account number on the phone can be dicey anyway. People should consider pulling out their credit card or debit card instead.
The bottom line is that these payment methods help scammers stay in the shadows, and they offer people little or no protection from fraud.
In fact, people should be skeptical about any telemarketer who pressures them to pay a certain way. Credit cards offer people the most protection, but even then, people will want to make sure they aren’t dealing with a phone scam.
Under the TSR, telemarketers also aren’t allowed to charge an up-front fee to help someone recover money lost to fraud.
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These changes add to protections people already have under the TSR, including:
• The National Do Not Call Registry
• Rules about when telemarketers can call and what they have to tell people when they do
• Rules about billing, abandoning calls, and caller ID transmission
Limits on robocalls
If telemarketers don’t follow the rules, tell people to hang up – and report them to the FTC. Read The Telemarketing Sales Rule and an FTC press release to learn more.
FTC Launches Site for Free Identity Theft Recovery
Identity theft victims can now receive a free, were victims of identity theft in 2014. personalized identity theft recovery plan from the The updated website provides a range of new FTC’s IdentityTheft.gov website. features designed to make the recovery process as The site enables identity theft victims to create easy as possible for consumers. It now walks consum- the documents they need to alert police, the main ers through a simplified step-by-step checklist that is credit bureaus, and the IRS, among others. They can tailored to the specific type of identity theft they are also file a complaint with the FTC. facing. The advice consumers receive is not generic but is customized for their individual needs. In 2015, the FTC received over 490,000 consum- er complaints about identity theft, representing a 47- For more information, read this FTC press release. percent increase over the prior year, and the Depart- ment of Justice estimates that 17.6 million Americans
This newsletter was supported in part by a grant (No. 90NP0003) from the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Grantees carrying out projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Therefore, points of view or opinions do not necessarily represent official ACL or DHHS policy.