Day two of the national do-not-call registry generated more consumer complaints about unwanted sales calls and prompted top industry officials to warn a handful of firms to stop calling numbers on the list.
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The industry also has one fewer company, with Gannett Co.'s telemarketing unit having closed its doors Wednesday.
Though the government-sponsored list is still in legal limbo, the bulk of the telemarketing industry appeared to be complying, said H. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association, which represents about 80 percent of the firms that make sales calls.
"The bottom line is we think we've stopped about 90 percent of the telemarketing activity" to the more than 50 million numbers on the registry, Wientzen said.
About 200 consumers have called the DMA, about half with complaints; the rest were asking how to get on the list. Wientzen said those unhappy callers led him and other DMA officials to call the heads of a few offending companies. He declined to identify them, but he said the main problem now seems to be small franchises of larger corporations that didn't realize they were supposed to comply.
The Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites), which is trying to enforce compliance in spite of a court ruling limiting its access to the registry, said it fielded 175 more complaints yesterday. That brings the total so far to 425.
Gannett Telemarketing Inc., a subsidiary of Gannett Co., said that on Wednesday it closed its five call centers, which had 19 full-time and 400 part-time employees. One center in Springfield employed five full-time workers.
"It was no longer cost-effective to keep it operating," said Gannett spokeswoman Tara Connell. The subsidiary made sales calls on behalf of other companies, not for the company's newspapers.
