Telemarketers, the FCC and How Easy It Is to Ruin Your Company's Reputation

I was having a problem with a telemarketing company who would not stop calling my house. They were breaking several FCC laws, and I was fed up. The company showing up on my caller i.d. was Infusion Resource, so being the "take no prisoners" kind of woman I am, I hunted them down and called them. I talked to a very nice woman named Marian, who promised me that the calls would stop that day. They didn't. I waited a day, hoping it was just a delay, and then this morning when I got another call, I called the FCC to file a report. The man at the FCC was truly kind and gracious, and promised me the calls would stop.

So this afternoon at about 3:45, I got another call from Infusion Resource. Preparing to give whoever it was a piece of my mind, I answered. The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Louis Freshman, the Director of Operations at Infusion Resource. He apologized profusely for what had happened, explained to me that it was the marketing company, not them, and that they were not supposed to use the company name on the calls. Well, I'm glad they did, because I never would have known who to call to get it stopped. Lou is a down-to-earth, nice man who loves his company and doesn't want its reputation ruined because of a bad marketing campaign.

I'm writing this so people will see that things aren't always what they appear. Unfortunately, bad reports are already all over the internet about this company's marketing campaign, and I hope it can overcome this and come out on top. Also, I want to let people know that unlike some large, bureaucratic government agencies, calling the FCC actually gets results. In this case, I was dealing with a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPS) called "abandoned calls," which is when a marketer doesn't pick up within 2 seconds of your answering the phone. The act also requires that telemarketers remove your name from the list if you ask them to, and these people were hanging up before I could get it out of my mouth. I guess if they don't hear it, they don't have to comply with the law, right? Wrong.

Telemarketers are out for themselves. They get paid by the number of calls they make and the number of leads they generate. They don't care about obeying the law, but they should, because there are a lot of people like me who will turn them in if they don't. It's sad when they ruin a company's reputation in the meantime.

Thanks to Lou Freshman at Infusion Resource for caring what one person thinks of his company. It's easy to lose faith in an economy where all corporations seem to care about is making a buck. I hope in some small way this mitigates the damage done to the company's reputation, because they seem to be a pretty upright place.