Thank You, FTC! Do Not Call Registrations Will Not Lapse After All

Hard to believe it’s been nearly five years, but it has --- and thus the registrations many people made into the national Do Not Call registry were set to lapse next year. Many were concerned that people would forget to renew the registrations and would thus be inundated with sales calls (I set an appt in my PDA calendar 5 years in advance after registering, myself!).

Because of this, legislation was introduced that would make registration permanent. Typical of any such legislation, it wasn’t clear if the registration would pass before prior to some having their registrations lapse. To prevent this, the FTC announced on Tuesday that while such legislation is in progress, it will not allow any registrations to lapse.

In a press release, the Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Lydia Parnes said:

that after carefully considering changes that have taken place since the Registry was implemented in June 2003, "the Commission now commits that it will not drop any telephone numbers from the Registry based on the five-year expiration period pending final Congressional or agency action on whether to make registration permanent."

Whew. Everyone breathe a heavy sigh of relief, especially during dinner.