Yay! Phone Solicitors in WA ‘Handcuffed’ By Legislators Even More

For once both sides of the aisle in Olympia agreed on something.

Bill limiting phone solicitor passes overwhelmingly

  House Bill (HB) 1497 and its Senate companion passed over the weekend in Olympia, and while it adds more restrictions for telephone solicitors, probably the biggest boost was the limiting of such activities to between the hours of 8 AM and 5 PM.

Bill also makes other new requirements:

"Requires telephone solicitors to provide identifying information within the first 30 seconds of a call, and to end the call within 10 seconds of the called party indicating they want to end the call.

 Requires telephone solicitors requesting a donation or gift of money to provide a specific list of options to the called party.

 Expands the definition of telephone solicitation to include calls to nonresidential telephone customers."

The bill passed 47-0 in the State Senate and 90-5 in the State House. Wonder who the five were that voted against it?

It probably won't have any effect on the computer-generated robocalls that seem to spam up our phones sometimes, but anything involving a carbon-based life unit who calls you now has more handcuffs.  Good!

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However, there are some calls this bill does not affect:

"Telephone solicitation does not include:

• calls made in response to a request or inquiry by the called party; calls made by a not-for-profit organization to its own list of bona fide or active members of the organization;

• • calls limited to polling or soliciting the expression of ideas, opinions, or votes;

or • business-to-business contacts. The TSA does not cover calls from political parties."

So we will still have political folks buzzing us...but it's a start.