Should Charities Have Special Treatment by the TPS?
With more and more UK households registered with the Telephone Prefence Service (TPS) I noticed in the news that Hugh McCaw of Relationship Marketing claiming that there was a “miscarriage of justice” for charities in the 1990s when the TPS was first conceived.
He is basically saying that the government should rethink its stance not to give charities a different status in the TPS system because the initial decision that fundraising calls should be treated the same as commercial telemarketing calls, and not allowed to households registered with the TPS,(unlike market research calls which are permitted) has meant that there are less and less prospective charity donators able to be contacted by telemarketing campaigns.
I’m not sure whether giving charities a special status would be a good thing – obviously not many people would begrudge genuine, established charities this special exemption. But wouldn’t this lead to thinly veiled “charitable organisations” using charity as a cover to try and sell items and services to people who have specifically opted out of receiving such calls?
I agree Tony, giving charities a special status to be exempt from TPS is opening the flood gates for abuse of the system. I work with in a telemarketing environment and really don’t find that TPS has had a massive effect what we do any way. What does any one else think?
Charities should be subject to the same rulings as commercial organisations. TPS is about nuisance calls, and there should be no differentiation. Individuals should have the choice of permitting or denying charity calls.