Sun
Aug 25 2013
01:53 pm
Tennessee DO NOT CALL program: a warning
By: michael kaplan

Due to bothersome solicitations, I filed a complaint several months ago with the Tennessee Regulatory Authority. Here's the receipt for the complaint:

The Tennessee DO NOT CALL Sales Solicition program is in receipt of your complaint.

We appreciate you registering your telemarketing complaint with the Tennessee Do Not Call program so that we may better help you in our efforts to reduce unwanted telephone solicitations in the State of Tennessee.

You will be contacted if we need additional information.

What they don't tell you is that - due to a new state law - you will be billed monthly for this "service," at the rate of $0.95/month, through your regular phone bill. Plus tax.

And, the troublesome, unsolicited calls have increased since I filed the complaint ...

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bizgrrl's picture

Are you sure this $0.95/month

Submitted by bizgrrl on Mon, 2013/08/26 - 6:32am.

Are you sure this $0.95/month fee isn't the Tennessee Regulatory Authority Inspection Fee?

From the State of Tennessee Regulatory Authority:

The Inspection, Control and Supervision Fee, commonly referred to as an "Inspection Fee", is a fee charged by the TRA to your telecommunications service provider. The TRA is funded by the utilities that it regulates. By statute, your telecommunications service provider can pass this charge along to its customers.

From the :
Chattanooga Times Free Press

"In March 2013, AT&T began recovery of some of these inspection fees for 2011 by adding a one-time charge of $1.99 as a line item on customer bills," Corney said via email. "A monthly 'inspection fee' charge will begin later this year to recover inspection fees for other years."

I recently added a phone number to the Do Not Call registry. It so happens that the new AT&T Tennessee Regulatory Authority Inspection Fee of $0.95 was added to the bill around the same time. However, the $0.95 charge is also added to another phone bill that is not on the Do Not Call registry.

michael kaplan's picture

Are you sure this $0.95/month

Submitted by michael kaplan on Mon, 2013/08/26 - 10:21am.

Are you sure this $0.95/month fee isn't the Tennessee Regulatory Authority Inspection Fee?

It is. I called TRA and got this response:

"State law now allows companies to recover the fees charged them by the State between 2009 and 2012."

In response to my complaint that unsolicited calls have increased:

"Don't answer those calls."

Andy Axel's picture

Thanks to easy number

Submitted by Andy Axel on Mon, 2013/08/26 - 11:10am.
(in reply to michael kaplan)

Thanks to easy number spoofing, it's damned near impossible to avoid answering those calls.

Perhaps if there was a truth-in-caller-ID law?

redmondkr's picture

You're just too popular.

Submitted by redmondkr on Mon, 2013/08/26 - 10:39am.

I have been on the state and federal do not call lists since their inception and have had to file maybe five reports total.

With a federal complaint, you push the 'send' button and you never hear from them again. The complaint probably goes directly into the recycle bin, but you get that warm fuzzy feeling knowing you have contributed to the cause.

I haven't had a telemarketing call in years.

I flushed my land line last December in favor of a smart phone and made the mistake of accepting a 'new' number. I occasionally get calls for the last user of that number and politely explain the situation. Then I immediately place the calling number into the phone's 'reject call' list. It will accept 100 numbers.

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