Managers Overwhelmed by Interest in Telemarketer 'Do-Not-Call' Registry.

By Andrea K. Walker, The Baltimore Sun Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jun. 28--Mildred Rosado is fed up with telephone sales callers.

They call her during dinner, when she's trying to spend time with her family and even when she's getting ready for work.

"Telemarketers are driving me crazy," said Rosado, a health information specialist at Mercy Medical Center.

So, yesterday morning when she heard about a new federal registry that promises to spare her most pesky sales calls, she went right to the computer to sign up.

But an army of other frustrated Americans had the same idea and, after three attempts, Rosado still hadn't made it to the Web site.

In its first day of operation, the national registry at www.donotcall.gov, was swamped by people tired of calls at inconvenient times from companies pitching everything from free vacations to credit cards to telephone service.

"We thought there was going to be high interest, but this is just amazing," said David Torok, national "Do Not Call" regional project manager. "We're extraordinarily pleased."

The Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission will jointly administer the "Do Not Call" program. Legislation authorizing the effort was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in March.

The FTC, which manages the Web site, had to bring in extra computer servers to handle the demand. By early afternoon, the commission had posted a warning on the site attributing its snail's pace to the high volume of interest.

By 10:30 a.m., the Web site and a separate phone registry had registered 250,000 people. By 2:30, 635,000 people had registered, and by 5 p.m. 735,000 had signed up. At one point in the morning, the Web site was receiving 1,000 hits per second.

Cheryl Hystad, executive director of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, said the high interest is to be expected.

"We have had people asking for the last year when this was going to start, when this was going to happen," Hystad said. "A lot of people have been waiting for this."

Richard Hackett, an account executive at the Baltimore technology company G1440 was one of the people clogging the system. He tried once in the morning and again later in the day, with no luck.

"It's just being slammed," he said. "But I'm not surprised. I figured 10 million people would be trying. I think everybody wants to do it."

Bill Ambrose, a director at Mind Over Machines software firm in Timonium, tried too, but couldn't get on. He'll give it another shot Monday when perhaps things have slowed down.

Ambrose became so annoyed with telemarketing calls that he stopped answering his phone in the evenings. His family and friends know to call on his cellular phone if they really need him.

"I don't know how they're going to enforce it, but it certainly is worth putting in my phone number to see if it works," Ambrose said. "If it eliminates 20 percent that will be great. If it eliminates them all, wonderful."

The FTC predicts it will block about 80 percent of the calls. Charities, surveys and political calls will be exempt.

A company may also call someone on a no-call list if the person has bought, leased or rented its product in the past 18 months. Telemarketers can call if the person has called or in...uired about something from the company in the past three months.

To register on the Web site, consumers simply provide the phone number they want protected and an e-mail address where they can receive a confirmation message.

FTC officials ran into a second problem yesterday when they discovered some of the confirmation messages were being blocked as spam. The agency has been contacting Internet service providers to correct the problem.

People west of the Mississippi River may sign up by calling 888-382-1222 from the phone number the consumer wants registered. The 888-number will be made nationwide in nine days.

Telemarketers attempt up to 104 million calls to consumers and businesses every day, according to the FCC.

Phone sales firms will soon have to access the registry every three months and delete the numbers on it from their phone banks -- or face being fined $11,000 per call if they call a number on the list.

Consumers have until Aug. 31 to register and enforcement will begin Oct. 1, when people should expect to see drastic reductions in telemarketing calls. People who sign up after the summer will be added to the list later.

"You didn't have to register today," Torok said. "This just goes to show how much interest there is."

The FTC expects up to 60 million phone numbers to be registered in the first year. About 166 million residential phone numbers are listed in the United States.

Rosado, taking a smoke break at Mercy Hospital, said she'll keep logging on until she gets through: "I'll try anything at this point."

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(c) 2003, The Baltimore Sun. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.