
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 12, 1995                   TAG: 9507120032
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JUNK CALLS

TELEPHONE answering machines can help consumers screen out unwanted calls. But some people object as a matter of principle to the gadgets, and won't have them in their homes. And even those who have them can't completely avoid junk calls, which invariably come when the family is sitting down to dinner or a very important wanted call is expected.

When one is waiting to hear that a healthy new baby has arrived, or a loved one in another city is safely out of surgery, it is not a pleasure to pick up the phone and hear a pitch for aluminum siding, burial plots, lifetime light bulbs, magazine subscriptions or family portraits at discount prices.

Four years ago, when Williamsburg Del. George Grayson introduced a bill to give consumers more protection from junk calls, it seemed unnecessary. Better, we said, for customers to just say no and hang up than to create a new state bureaucracy to intervene on consumers' behalf.

But since then there's been a marked increase in dialing for dollars, and there may be no other way to stop the dingalings. After thousands of folks protested, Bell Atlantic-Virginia backed down last week on its plans to sell lists of customers' names, addresses and telephone numbers to outside marketers. But unless the customers pay to have unlisted phone numbers, that information is available in local telephone directories, and several third-party companies are already copying it on CD ROM Disks or paper and selling it to telemarketers.

Under Grayson's defeated bill, telephone customers could have paid a fee to be listed in a state registry (to be maintained by the Virginia Division of Consumers Affairs) if they did not want to receive calls from telephone solicitors. Rather than randomly making calls, telemarketers would have to check the registry to avoid violations of the Virginia Consumers Protection Act. Inconvenient for them, perhaps, but maybe a good time-management device. Why waste time calling people who are not interested in buying by phone, and who are going to be infuriated by such pitches?

As for the fee-to-register required from consumers, it might be a reasonable price to pay for the peace and quiet in homes too often intruded upon by junk calls.

by CNB