ALJ/GEW/tcg Mailed 3/17/2003

Decision 03-03-038 March 13, 2003

BEFORE THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Order Instituting Rulemaking on the Commission's Own Motion to Establish an Appropriate Error Rate for Connections Made by an Automatic Dialing Device Pursuant to Section 2875.5 of the Public Utilities Code.

Rulemaking 02-02-020 (Filed February 21, 2002)

O P I N I O N

1. Summary

In this decision, the Commission takes further steps to reduce telemarketing calls in which Californians, upon answering the phone, are greeted either with prolonged silence or an unexplained disconnection. We require telemarketers using predictive dialing equipment to ensure that (1) the predictive dialer does not disconnect a call answered by a live person, and (2) an agent responds to a called party within 2 seconds of the called party's completed greeting. As required by statute, we define an "acceptable error rate" for this standard and establish the rate at 3% of all predictive dialer calls answered by a live person. We require telemarketers using predictive dialing equipment to maintain records showing their compliance. We do not at this time reduce the acceptable error rate below 3% because our investigation shows that to do so would either eliminate jobs or move them out of California without verifiable benefit, and because impending federal and state do-not-call registers will provide consumers with an effective way to reduce the number of unwanted telephone marketing calls.