Private Citizen, Inc.

Private Citizen, Inc. (PCI), an Illinois-based for-profit corporation, serves as an agent for businesses and individuals in notifying telemarketers not to call PCI members. The organization has 4,000 members, about 500 of them in California.

PCI states that the term "error rate" is a misnomer, in that telemarketers set the parameters of predictive dialers that essentially determine the "error rate," or what the industry calls an abandonment rate. Thus, according to PCI, a telemarketing firm that sets a "high" abandonment rate enables its staff to be kept busy with a steady stream of live-answered calls. A higher abandonment rate setting reduces a telemarketer's idle time between calls and, according to PCI, encourages agents to invest less time with reluctant called parties, knowing that another potential customer is immediately available.

Another function of the predictive dialer is to identify and react to answering machines. The industry term for this is "call progress analysis." According to PCI, the less time the algorithm is set to run, the more likely the predictive dialer will mistake a live-answered call for an answering machine, causing the dialer to hang up on the person. By setting a longer time, the called party experiences a period of "dead air" from the time of answering to the time when the dialer recognizes a live answer and switches the call to an available telemarketer. Historically, PCI states, industry trade journals commonly mention a 10% error rate in answering machine detection. According to PCI, predictive dialers also may be programmed to cancel the ringing of a telephone after one, two or three rings when the dialer recognizes, after dialing, that no telemarketer is available.

PCI claims that for all sales solicitation cold calls, a 1.5% sales rate is considered better than average. It adds: "Considering that most telemarketing calls are more of a `telenuisance,' the added insult of that industry's practice of programming a device to intentionally hang up on a set of residents, or not speak to those they call, is an absurdity that is not tolerated under any other situation." (PCI Comments, at 3.)

Setting a 0% error rate and turning off a predictive dialer's answering machine detector will not eliminate the usefulness of predictive dialers, according to PCI, since the device still can be used to auto-dial phone numbers, filter out no-answer, busy and disconnected lines, show on-screen data pertinent to the called party and perform real-time calculations of the telemarketing campaign.

PCI urges the Commission to craft rules that support the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 47 U.S.C. § 227, and Federal Communications Commission regulations at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200. Among other things, these rules require that the telemarketer supply identifying information and encourage a procedure for taking do-not-call requests.

PCI condemns the telemarketing industry and its intrusion into American homes. It estimates that predictive dialers are used to make 177 million calls a year, many of them hang-up calls. PCI urges California to take "swift and effective action to protect its residents from an industry that is out of control...." (PCI Comments, at 9.)