Companies fined for violating No Call list

Business Today

More than 72,000 companies have paid more than $580,000 to learn that Missouri means business when it warns against telemarketing calls to people who have indicated they don't want the calls.

"We do mean business," said Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, who was in Cape Girardeau on June 17 to discuss the state's No Call list, which protects more than 980,000 residential phone lines.

Cape Girardeau County has the largest percentage of home phones on the No Call list that went into effect last July 1, said Nixon.

"More than a third of the county's residential phone lines are on the list," he said.

Thirty-one percent of telephone subscribers in Stoddard County are on the No-Call list, and 27 percent of telephone users are on the list in Scott and Madison counties.

Elsewhere, the percentage drops - to only 10 percent in Ripley County, 12 percent in Pemiscot, and 17 percent in Bollinger and Dunklin counties.

Nixon was on a statewide tour to encourage telephone users to sign up if they want to decrease the number of telemarketing calls they receive.

As the no-call law nears its first anniversary, more than 7 million people nationally have signed onto no-call lists in more than 15 states.

The department has received about 21,000 complaints this year, but that's down from more than 90,000 complaints at the same time two years ago.

Many of the complaints, said Nixon, were against telephone companies and credit card companies, which are exempt from the law.

One of the largest settlements since the law went into force was that against "Miss Cleo." Access Resource Services Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which advertises psychic services through a spokeswoman known as Miss Cleo was ordered to pay $75,000 for making telemarketing calls to Missourians who have their phone numbers on the state's list.

Under the court order, Miss Cleo will obtain a copy of Missouri's No Call list - now containing more than 988,000 telephone numbers representing some 2.5 million Missourians.