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Welcome to the Compliance Guide

If you make or receive calls from consumers, you've come to the right place for the ultimate resource on Legal Telemarketing.

Here you will find a variety of information, resources and tools to help you comply with the hundreds of complex federal and state laws pertaining to both inbound and outbound telemarketing.

If you are new to telemarketing regulations, you might find the Glossary to the right useful.  Simply click on each term to see an explanation.  You might also want to check out the Frequently Asked Questions.

In the News / Articles section, you will find a number of articles from the industry's leading authorities on hot issues such as calls to cell phones, new Canadian telemarketing laws and much more.  There is also a complete archive of our popular DNC.com Monthly Compliance Update newsletters.

For free in-depth information on a variety of compliance topics, head over to Resources where you can download white papers, recorded webinars and our DriveTime Audio Training that you can listen to while you drive to work.

Our Compliance Gap Analysis Wizard is a free and easy to use tool that will determine which areas of telemarketing regulations apply to your organization and then build you a customized checklist of compliance steps.The Wizard will also provide detailed recommendations for filling the gaps in your current compliance process.

Trying to find information in state statutes pertaining to telemarketing?  We've compiled all relevant Statutes for all states. The text of the statutes has also been nicely formatted to make it easy to read and follow.

Finally, we'd like to invite you to take a free demo of Compliance Guide Pro - the indispensable compliance tool for teleservices professionals.  Compliance Guide Pro is built on a first-of-its-kind comprehensive database of over 1200 federal and state rules and contains the following features:

Regulatory Info

Allows you to select one or more of the following regulatory topics and view summary information for any number of states or view key information in a chart format.  Each regulatory rule provides a citation which links directly to the specific paragraph in the full text of the state statutes.

  • Definitions
  • Commercial Registration
  • Registration Fees and Bonds
  • Do Not Call List
  • Time Restriction
  • ID Disclosure
  • Contract Cancellation
  • NPO Solicitation Exemptions Chart
  • DNC Exemptions for EBR and Permission
  • Prerecorded Calls w/ Express Written Consent
  • Permission To Continue
  • No Rebuttal
  • Call Monitoring
  • Citations Reference Chart

ExemptionMaster™

A state of the art expert system that will quickly and easily identify every single rule that applies to your particular situation, in which states you can claim an exemption to various regulatory requirements and what the bottom-line set of requirements are in all states you do business in.

  • Quickly identifies all registration & bonding costs and requirements for each calling campaign
  • Determines exemptions you can apply to disclosure rules, permission to continue, etc.
  • Automatic notification of any change in law concerning your campaigns
  • Tracks your compliance decisions on each campaign for easy reference

TrainingMaster™

A comprehensive training and testing system designed especially for the high-turnover teleservices industry.  Comes with built-in DNC, Sexual Harassment, Safety, etc. training modules developed by industry and legal experts for both Agents and Supervisors.  Plus you can customize them or build a completely new training course and easily train and test all your agents and the agents of vendors you outsource to to verify their knowledge of key product and company procedure details.

  • Provides added Safe Harbor defense
  • Self-administered exams for agents and supervisors
  • Detailed reporting allows managers to monitor and maintain an effective ongoing training regiment
Glossary of Industry terms
ADAD
Automatic Dialing and Announcing Device. ADAD telemarketing is also known as pre-recorded message telemarketing and is specially regulated by various jurisdictions.
Agency or Broker
Refers to teleservices agencies and call list brokerage firms respectively. Special provisions are made for these business types to accommodate their need to scrub lists on behalf of multiple clients, each represented by a Project with its own private DNC and EBR database, policy, National (FTC) Subscription, etc.
DMA
Direct Marketing Assocation. Maintains and publishes several databases such as the Wireless Blocks (Prefixes) and the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). A subsidiary of the DMA also happens to maintain the DNC databases for several states.
DNC Policy
A document that details the organization's procedures with respect to the Do-Not-Call regulations, especially the organization's internal DNC database. All telemarketers are required by law to maintain and follow such a document and make it available to the public upon request.
DNM
Do-Not-Mail database of people who do not wish to receive sales solicitations by mail.
EBR
Existing Business Relationship. The exact definitions of EBR vary between jursdictions but are typically defined as some varying length of time since the last contact of the telemarketer with a person, where the contact can be of different types: Explicit Permission, Inquiry originating from the person, or Purchase. The last date of a Purchase is typically defined as the date of the last shipment or payment on a given purchase. EBRs are typically exempt from many DNC regulations.
Exemption
A exception to the DNC regulations given by a jurisdiction to certain types of businesses engaged in certain types of telemarketing.
Interstate Call
Call placed across state lines - falls within both the FTC and FCC jurisdictions and possibly within the jurisdication of the state call is placed to.
Intrastate Call
Call placed to a number within the same state - falls within the state and the FCC but not FTC jurisdications.
Multi-Location Business
Refers to organizations with numerous branch offices, franchises, representatives, etc. Special provisions are made for this business type to accommodate their need to manage a single set of internal DNC and EBR databases, policy and National (FTC) Subscription that can nevertheless be securely and privately used by each location.
NANP
North American Numbering Plan is the telephone numbering scheme that serves the United States, Canada, and several other countries and territories in the region. The NANP divides the participating countries into area codes, each of which is a three-digit number. Within each area code, a telephone number is always 7 digits.
National DNC (FTC) Subscription
Subscription to one or more area codes (or the entire United States) of the National DNC Registry maintained by the FTC. This yearly subscription is required by law for non-exempt telemarketers and must cover all area codes into which telephone calls will be placed. Each telemarketing organization must have its own subscription.
Organization Id (FTC)
An id ending in dash and 5 numbers assigned by the FTC's National Registry to an organization. This Id is used to login to the FTC's National Registry web site.
SAN (FTC)
Subscription Account Number is a unique number identifying an organization's subscription to specific area codes in the National Registry. The SAN is assigned when payment is accepted by the FTC. At the end of the annual subscription period, the SAN expires. A SAN can be provided to an Agency or Broker who can add it to the National Registry account associated with their Organization Id so that they can obtain the client-specific DNC database on their behalf. Hence, more than one SAN can be associated with a given Organization Id and a SAN can be accessible through more than one Organization Id.
Scrub
Scrubbing is the process of checking a list of phone numbers against one or more databases and producing an output in which the phone numbers in the list that match the database(s) are removed or separated out or somehow flagged.

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This site is provided for informational purposes only. These materials do not constitute legal advice and should not be used as a substitute for competent legal counsel. No representations are made regarding the timeliness, accuracy, or completeness of these materials.