The National Do Not Call Registry gives lawn care consumers a choice about whether to receive telemarketing calls at home. Most telemarketers should not call your number once it has been on the registry for three months. If they do, a consumer can easily file a complaint at the government's Web site. They can register home or mobile phones for free and the registration will be effective for five years.

The National Do Not Call Registry applies to any plan, program, or campaign to sell goods or services through interstate phone calls.This includes telemarketers who solicit consumers, often on behalf of third party sellers.It also includes sellers who provide, offer to provide, or arrange to provide goods or services to consumers in exchange for payment.

The National Do Not Call Registry does not limit calls by political organizations, charities, or telephone surveyors.

A consumer registered on the National Do Not Call Registry, may be telephoned if a company has had an established business relationship up to 18 months after the last purchase or delivery from it, or their last payment to it, unless they specifically ask the company not to call again. (In that case, the company must honor that request not to call. If they subsequently call again, the business may be subject to a fine of up to $11,000.)

If a consumer has made an inquiry to a company or submitted an application to it, for three months afterwards the company can call. If they made a specific request to that company not to call, however, then the company may not call, even if the consumer had an established business relationship with that company.

Also, if consumers do not want to register with the national registry, a consumer can still prohibit individual telemarketers, one by one, from calling by asking them to put their names on their company’s do not call list.

What to do?

First, if you or a telemarketing company is going to do lawn care telemarketing for you, then you must register with the Do Not Call Registry. They will give you a Subscriber Access Number (SAN). You may obtain one at the following web site:

https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov/Profile/Create.aspx

This is required by law. Next, you must run check every number you're going to telemarket against the Do Not Call list. Failure to do so could result in a fine of up to $11000 per incident.

Telephone numbers included in the Do Not Call registry must then be removed from any data base of telephone numbers you might have on file, even if you generated the file yourself through block leading.

Starting January 1, 2005, telemarketers and sellers will be required to search the registry at least once every 31 days and drop from their call lists the phone numbers of consumers who have registered.

You must renew your Do Not Call registration every 12 months beginning from the date of registration.