The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the new Final Rule for the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) last week. And it’s a doozy.

Long-time readers know that TCPAWorld has been all over this since Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was released back in May 2022. Now the time has come to digest the new rule.

The New Rule focuses on updated recordkeeping requirements and restrictions on Business to Business calls. But, the recordkeeping requirements is where the spiciness comes into play.

Under the new rule, a record of each telemarketing call made must include the following TEN (!!) items:

1. The name of the telemarketer that placed or received the call
2. The seller for which the telemarketing call is placed or received
3. The good, service, or charitable purpose that is the subject of the telemarketing call
4. Whether the telemarketing call is to an individual consumer or a business consumer
5. Whether the telemarketing call is an outbound telephone call
6. Whether the telemarketing call utilizes a prerecorded message
7. The calling number, the callled number, date, time and duration of the telemarketing call
8. The telemarketing script and prerecorded message, if any, used during the call
9. The caller ID number and caller ID name (if transmitted), any contracts or proof of authorization to use that telephone number and name, and the time period that the authorization applies
10. The disposition of the call, including but not limited to, what’s the call connected, dropped, or transferred. If transferred, the number and name of the party the call was transferred to

These ten items are necessary for every call, unless “an individual telemarketer” is “manually entering a single telephone number to initatie the call”. Then, the telemarketer doesn’t have to retain the caller ID information or the disposition of the call information. But, the other eight still apply.

The commentary of the new rule states there will be a grace period of 180 days after publication in the Federal Register for the updated recordkeeping requirements.

Additionally, the new rule adds some clarification on the required recordkeeping around consent. The FTC “wanted to make clear that common practices previously employed by telemarketers or sellers, such as maintaining a list of IP address and timestamps as proof of consent, are insufficient to demonstrate that a consumer has, in fact, provided consent to receive robocalls or receive telemarketing calls when the consumer has registered her phone number on the DNC Regisry”

There’s a lot to unpack around the new consent recordkeeping requirements and we will have a post later this week specifically about consent.

The rule also incorporates business to business calls in the TSR’s prohibitions under misrepresentation and providing false or misleading information. Notably, the new rule does not include B2B calls under the revised recordkeeping requirements.

The FTC’s New Rule will change how telemarketers and sellers are going to look at recordkeeping. There are some other nuances in the new rules. And there might be some constitutional issues as mentioned before on TCPAWorld.

We are going to have more coverage of this new rule this week.

Keeping you in the loop.