You might not recognize the term "upsell," but chances are you've experienced it.
An "upsell" is when you call a company to order one thing - say a treadmill - and immediately after the sale is completed, you're transferred to a second telemarketer who pitches you a fitness magazine.
What you might not realize is that this second telemarketer works for a different company than the one you called.
What you probably also don't know is that it's not just your call that's been transferred - it's your bank or credit-card account number as well.
The upsell is under attack, as are a wide range of telemarketing practices, as the Federal Trade Commission considers rewriting the rules that govern sales calls to our homes.
The proposal that's made the biggest news splash is the one to create a national "do-not-call" list that would allow consumers to tell companies once and for all not to dial their homes.
When the FTC asked for public comments, it got 42,000 e-mails and letters. Individual consumers wrote - everyone from single moms who rely on telemarketing jobs to feed their families to senior citizens who've had the bejesus scared out of them by "dead air" calls from automatic dialing equipment. Consumer groups such as the National Consumers League and the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators weighed in, too.
Telemarketers say having consumers repeat their account information to each telemarketer is an inconvenience for the consumer, will slow down the rate of sales calls each operator can handle and exposes the consumer to more chances of identity theft, since most transferred billing information is encrypted.
A NATIONAL DO-NOT CALL LIST. Under the current Telemarketing Sales Rule, consumers can tell companies to stop calling them, one sales call at a time.
The FTC is toying with creating a national do-not-call registry that telemarketers would have to honor or risk being fined.
It wouldn't stop all calls, because the FTC doesn't regulate some industries, such as phone companies and banks. But it does regulate telemarketing companies, so if a bank hired a telemarketing firm to do its calling, the telemarketer would be bound by the do-not-call list.
Predictably, businesses that rely heavily on telemarketing services - magazine publishers, telephone companies and financial companies among them - are lining up against the idea.
The credit bureau Experian denounced a do-not-call list as "almost sinister." It insisted that because such a list only would stop some, not all, sales calls, disillusioned consumers "will become even more cynical and suspicious of telemarketing."
Other companies were a little less dramatic, but just as emphatic.
Telemarketing is, after all, a huge industry. A survey by the Direct Marketing Association estimated that outbound calls - ones from companies to consumers - generated $274 billion in sales last year.
Telemarketers insist that the FTC doesn't have the authority to create a do-not-call list because Congress very specifically gave that authority to another agency, the Federal Communications Commission, which passed up the chance to create a registry.
A national do-not-call registry, they argue, would be costly and trample on legitimate marketers' commercial speech.
In the other corner of the ring are advocacy groups and consumers who say that people are tired of having their lives interrupted by sales calls.
Twenty-six states (Ohio is not among them) have enacted either statewide do-not-call lists or are on the verge of doing so, according to the Direct Marketing Association, which keeps track of such things for the industry. In Texas alone, more than a half-million consumers have put their numbers on the list since it went into effect in March.
Most of those states have told the federal government that it should be careful not to pre-empt state laws, which in many cases are tougher than the proposed federal restrictions.
Interestingly, although the state of New York reports that most consumers who signed up for its do-not-call list reported sharp drops in sales calls, the state's Consumer Protection Board has some anecdotal evidence that some telemarketers actually are targeting people on the list for sales calls. The board's theory is that people on the list have higher-than-average incomes and, therefore, are tantalizing sales prospects.
PREDICTIVE DIALERS. When your phone rings and you pick it up to hear dead air, chances are it's not a stalker, it's a predictive dialer. That's an automated system that dials several numbers at once to increase the efficiency of sales calls. The theory is that a single telemarketing salesperson can pick up a line with a person at home while dodging answering machines, busy signals or other things that slow down sales volume.
The FTC proposed ending all such hang-up calls, because they freak out consumers and waste their time.
The industry is trying to persuade the agency to limit predictive dialing hang-ups to 5 percent of calls made rather than a complete ban.
CHARITY FUND-RAISERS. In the wake of Sept. 11, Congress directed the FTC to curb calls from fraudulent charities. The government worried that fake charities ripped off well-intentioned donors and that charity scams might be used to fund terrorist or other criminal activities.
Although charities are not currently bound by the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the FTC wants professional telemarketing companies who call consumers on behalf of nonprofits to comply with the rule in the future.
That means that professional fund-raisers making calls for charities would be barred from calling after 9 p.m. or continuing to call after a person has asked the organization to stop.
Nonprofits are unhappy with the threat of restrictions, as are the telemarketers who make the calls for them. Ohio State University has gone on record as opposed to a do-not-call list, saying it would hinder their efforts to reach "lapsed donors," among others.
The Red Cross has asked the FTC to clarify whether its calls to prompt people to give blood would be considered solicitation calls.
PRISON CALLS. Another battle playing out is over the use of prisoners in telemarketing operations.
Consumer groups such as the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators say consumers are startled and afraid when they discover that some telemarketers are calling from prison cells.
The Enterprise Prison Institute and organizations for prisoners and their families, however, say the work helps prisoners prepare for jobs once they are released. The Enterprise Prison Institute says that 10 private companies employ a total of 300 prisoners in a handful of states, including Ohio. The groups say that measures are taken to keep prisoners from recording consumers' personal information, and that some companies transfer calls to civilians when that information is about to be revealed.
Abuses, they say, are rare.
The author is a reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio.