Do Not Call List

The Federal Trade Commission administers a national Do Not Call (DNC) list for telemarketing. Most telemarketers are forbidden from calling consumers that place their phone numbers on the list.

The Do Not Call List utility assists newspapers in complying with federal DNC lists. The utility will allow full DNC lists or changes to DNC lists to be imported. State lists may also be imported, provided they are in the same format as the federal DNC list. Federal DNC lists can be downloaded from http://telemarketing.donotcall.gov. The list can be in flat text or XML format—choose flat text for use with Circulation.

When a list is imported, phone numbers contained on the list are flagged as Do Not Call numbers. The Do Not Call setting can be used as a selection parameter in Targeted Marketing (which is the method most often used to generate telemarketing lists) and viewed for a specific occupant in the Occupant Phone window in Customer Service. Old DNC records can be deleted via the Do Not Call List purge utility.

To import a DNC list:

• Select Do Not Call List from the Utilities | Import menu to display the Do Not Call Import screen.

  
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field	Type	What to enter
  LIST	setup	Specify the list (e.g., “federal”, “Minnesota”) that is being imported. This must be defined in advance (see Do Note Call List in the Setup Manual).
  LIST TYPE	predefined	Indicate whether this is a full list or a list containing changes only.
  EFFECTIVE DATE	date	Enter the date on which this list becomes effective.
  ALL AREA CODES, AREA CODE	yes/no, integer (3)	Indicate whether the phone numbers for all area codes should be read in and, if not, enter the area code that should be read (enter “*” to multi-select area codes).
  FILE FORMAT	setup	Select the file map to use for this import.
  INPUT FILE NAME	open (30)	Enter the file name of the DNC list file sent by the government. The file must be placed in the /dti/exchange/cm directory. For the full list, each record in the file should contain only the occupant’s area code and phone number, separated by a comma. For example: 788,7643087.

• Select Continue to run the import. The phone numbers in the DNC list will be read and compared to Circulation’s Do Not Call records. If no record exists for a phone number, it will be added; if one does exist, the record’s start date will be updated with the effective date entered at run time. If importing a full DNC list, after the import all phone numbers not contained in the file will have their Do Not Call records end dated (the end date will be the day prior to the effective date).