The Federal Trade Commission recently reminded telemarketers to observe their newest rules in the types of payment methods being accepted. June 13, 2016 was the day these new rules were to be effective and can be found under the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR).
Telemarketers should observe new rule
The FTC urges all telemarketers and companies to comply by these added procedures. According to FTC, it is now illegal to take money from customers through:
Wire money transfers or cash-to-cash money transfers. Examples are the services that MoneyGram and Western Union provide.
Reloadable credit cards. These include obtaining PIN numbers from cash reload cards like MoneyPak, Vanilla Reload, or Reloadit packs. It is also not legal for telemarketers to request to add funds to their own prepaid cards.
Unsigned checks called “remotely created payment orders” to withdraw money directly from consumers’ bank accounts. These are checks where there is no signature required from the account holder.
Photo from twitter.com
“Con artists like payments that are tough to trace and hard for people to reverse,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC’s new telemarketing rules ban payment methods that scammers like, but honest telemarketers don’t use.”
The main goal of these guidelines is to not give a company direct access to their consumers’ bank accounts. There have been multiple cases of scams using the abovementioned methods.
There have been dozens of cases where scammers are using telemarketing as a means to exploit other people. FTC reminds people that they should be vigilante in not giving these hoaxes a chance to get in to their money.
Legitimate companies usually do not use these methods when asking for payment from their customers and take extra precaution to protect their clients’ privacy. It is important to take note of this as a consumer.
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