I haven’t had a land line since sometime in 2004. Yesterday, I received a telemarketing call on my cell phone pushing Discover Business Credit Cards. I seemed to have heard somewhere that it’s illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, and endeavored to arm myself for any future encounters.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), or 47 U.S.C. 227 Restrictions on use of telephone equipment, lays out what telemarketers may and may not do. While the TCPA does not specifically ban calls to cell phones, 47 U.S.C 227 (b) (1) (A) (iii) does state that

It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, or any person outside the United States if the recipient is within the United States—to make any call … using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice … to any telephone number assigned to a … cellular telephone service, … or any service for which the called party is charged for the call.

Requiring an actual person to manually enter each digit of each telephone number increases the cost of soliciting to cell phones such that it generally isn’t worth it. I guess one could ask a telemarketer if they used an autodialer when calling your cell phone–if they have they are probably in violation of the TCPA.

There are a few exceptions, of course, namely if the call:

• is made in behalf of a charity or nonprofit
• is made by debt collectors, debt purchasers, or creditors
• is made by an entity with which you have an “existing business relationship”

Junkbusters helpfully offers this Anti-Telemarketing Script, and the FCC publishes instructions on how to contact them with a complaint (scroll down to “What You Can Do” and “What to Include in Your Complaint”). You can also sue telemarketers in small claims court, and of course there is the FTC’s National Do Not Call Registry, which has a separate complaint process.