Senate Report

The third party who supports for TCPA is Federal Communications Commission. FCC is an independent government agency of the United States who works for people and seeks to provide better service. It is “created by statute (47 U.S.C. § 151 and 47 U.S.C. § 154) to regulate interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the media, public safety and homeland security, and modernizing itself” (Wikipedia,). One of FCC’s goal is to ensure public safety, which is related to the issue that robocalls may cause telephone scams. Thus, it is one of FCC’s responsibility to protect people’s privacy and assets. It will absolutely maintain even expand TCPA. Based on the data, “FCC and court rulings have interpreted the TCPA in an increasingly expansive way” (Deane & Williamson, 2017). FCC desires to get consent from consumers.

When the rule TCPA is beneficial for consumers, it must take off some benefits from companies who depend on or use robocalls as one way to make money. The first interest group who is directly affected by this policy is the department stores who use robocalls as one way to appeal customers. They will definitely be against this rule. Originally, using telephone calls to advertising was one of the main ways which the enterprises could attract consumers. Before, people could often receive calls from malls and department stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, etc. These companies and industries relied on robocalls to increase sales. After FCC published this rule, part of the potential consumers has the right to block the calls forever. As a result, as the advertisement decreases, the customers decrease. Fewer customers imply fewer sales. Those firms’ output will decrease and make less profit. If they put all the same input as before but get less money, in another word, the cost increases.

The next interest group who earned money from those department stores by helping them advertising are the telephone companies, and they are also deprived part of the profits away by TCPA. In the past, the telephone companies and the department stores always set a business relationship. At present, as the department stores are strictly banned to advertising by robocalls, the telephone companies are also cut off this way to make money. The telephone companies now have no way to continue such a deal to get profit. As the department stores’ profits go down with cost goes up, the telephone companies’ profits go down with cost goes up, as well.

COMMENTS FOR PROPOSED RULE

Consumers are the biggest victims of telephone scams. According to the data above, 97% of people just do not want to receive such calls. However, to hang up one robocall, people need to take at least several seconds, and may even be interrupted at all when they are dealing with some very important the staff. In a public place, a sudden robocall can disturb people around you, break the silence, and embarrass you. All things describing above are just in small cases. The biggest issue is telephone scam which can cause huge loss in both assets and spirit to consumer. From IEEE Xplore Digital Library, the authors said that “Telephone spam costs United States consumers $8.6 billion annually. In 2014, the Federal Trade Commission has received over 22 million complaints of illegal and wanted calls. Telephone spammers today are leveraging recent technical advances in the telephony ecosystem to distribute massive automated spam calls known as robocalls” (Tu & Doupe & Zhao & Ahn, 2016). As a result, one of the angry recipient who receives “Congratulations! You’ve won a free cruise!” phone call, “Philip Charvat, claims that Resort Marketing Group — the culprits behind some of those robocalls — violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act” (Scotti, 2017). On the other hand, with more and more advanced technology, customers now are more used to reading advertisement such as e-mails and text messages. Reading is much quicker than listening to the same content of words. By sending text messages, people can save their time and feel less disturbed and may be more willing to make an order. This concerns from the victims’ comment contribute a lot to the progress of TCPA.

The official group who are for TCPA is FCC who wrote this rule. FCC desires to protect the right of consumers, and it does protect people’s privacy by restricting robocalls. In the recent years, “the Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to expand the scope of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in an effort to crack down on robocalls from telemarketers” (Hoover, 2015). It does get certain big success that according to a survey in Feb. 2004, 92% got fewer calls. However, FCC sometimes may be too restrict to the free market with hypercorrection that “dissenting Commissioner Ajit Pai said it does not properly distinguish between legitimate businesses trying to reach their customers and unwanted telemarketers but rather lumps them all together despite ‘good faith efforts’ to conform to the TCPA” (Deane & Williamson, 2017).

COMMENTS AGAINST PROPOSED RULE

Many business interest groups have comment against the existing TCPA, and among them, the typical one should be The National Retail Federation (NRF). NRF is the world's biggest retail exchange affiliation, and it represents discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, and Main Street merchants in the United States and more than 45 nations. Those department stores who built a friendly and benign relationship with customers are being largely affected by the negative parts of TCPA. It claims that those department stores have the incentive to provide the better custom service due to free market competition. There are enough different telephone companies, and they will compete with each other to provide better service to the consumers. If Company A always sends robocalls automatically, the people who do not want to receive it will feel disturbed and upset. Then Company B knows the situation. It can smartly attract people with the choice of not receiving robocalls. Part of consumers originally from Company A will give it up and find Company B for service. After Company A realizes its mistake, it will immediately design new project to satisfy all of their potential costumers. As a result, there is always a competition between companies. To exist in the free market and make more profits, they will definitely always improve themselves and provide better and better service to consumers. Because of the competitive market, “with these factors in mind, many retailers strive to deliver only those communications that their customers want or reasonably expect to receive, and to make this experience as seamless as possible and not needlessly complicated. Communicating with customers as they prefer is good for consumers and good for business”(NFR, 2017). NFR’s goal is to create a competitive advantage both for industries and consumers if there is less restriction to the existing beneficial relationship between them. Its reasonable argument will encourage a healthier free market.

Furthermore, many organizations point the problem of reassigned numbers. Among this associations, Noble System Corporation can be a representative. NSC is provides customers with contact center software and service in a variety of industries and applications. In NSC’s opinion, it first recognizes that TCPA has the good theory, “but misguided attempt, to solve a tangential and relatively minor problem related to the overall problem of illegal robocalls. While illegal robocalls are the number one consumer complaint to the FCC and the FTC, this should not be conflated with the problem of inadvertent calls being made to reassigned numbers. The problem of inadvertent calls to reassigned numbers comprises a relatively small problem that is overshadowed by the larger problem of illegal robocalls in general. These are different problems, and the scope of the problem of the latter (illegal robocalls) does not justify the solution proposed for the former (reassigned number problem)” (NSC, 2017). NSC is not the only organizations who holds this argument. Other interest groups, such as American Bankers Association, Edison Electric Institution, and The Electronic Transactions Association all worry about the problem of resigned numbers. This is the bad effect TCPA brings to the industries, especially direct to contacting system and companies.

The last one, President Trump also desires to loose the act of TCPA. One of the reason is to build a better relationship between business and customer in a more free market. Although President Trump has not specially mentioned TCPA, he once said early 2017 that “I will keep working with Congress, with every agency and most importantly, the American people, until we eliminate every unnecessary, harmful and job-killing regulation that we can find... . We have a lot more coming” (Trump, 2017). However, there is deeper reason behind his policy that “President Trump's outline for his proposed 2018 budget includes deep cuts to several federal departments and agencies known for their strict regulatory regimes aimed at protecting individuals against business interests” (Deane & Williamson, 2017). People are not sure about where the cut budgets will be used at and whether the situation will be better or worse when there is looser regulatory.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION

Problems of robocalls should not have any government intervention because it could be resolved by the market on its own. Although at first, the customers are victims, after a period of development and competition, the market will finally lower the price to the marginal cost, which maximizes consumer surplus. There are enough different telephone companies, and they will compete with each other to provide better service to the consumers. This progress may require some time, but the government's excessive interference just leads the market to another worse condition, which has caused huge losses for both industries and part of consumers who want to receive robocalls, also to the originally benign business relationship. On the other hand, based on evidence, there will be more and more advanced technology appearing in the market. Malls and department stores all offer people with the chance of subscribing to their newsletter by email. In a word, in today's society with more and more improvement, robocalls are being transformed to a more efficient way like emails and text messages to attract customers.

To the old who still do not learn the new technology and do not know how to read and write emails, collecting information from robocalls is their usual way to see an advertisement in daily life. Those old people really need this. Our policy should not ignore them at all. Although this group of people is just a small proportion, the market has the ability to resolve the issue on its own to satisfy all the people. Thus, why do we not just let the market have positive free competition? The telephone companies can send a default robocalls to the house telephones holder who is older than 50 years old. If they are happy to receive future calls, both phone companies and the older will be benefited. The government should allow the free market and allow everyone to choose his or her own desired lifestyle.

References

8, 2. M. (n.d.). The Uncertain Future of the TCPA in the Trump Era. Retrieved November 9, 2017

Federal Communications Commission. (2017, November 05). Retrieved November 9, 2017

Hoover, J. (n.d.). FCC Expands TCPA To Robocalls Despite Litigation Fears - Law360. Retrieved November 9, 2017

J. (n.d.). Jornaya TCPA Guardian. Retrieved November 9, 2017

National Retail Federation. COMMENTS OF THE NATIONAL RETAIL FEDERATION. Retrieved November 9, 2017

Noble System Cooperation. COMMENTS OF NOBLE SYSTEMS CORPORATION. Retrieved November 9, 2017

Scotti, A. (2017, August 18). Victim of a 'free cruise' robocall? You might be owed $900. Retrieved November 9, 2017