Are Consumers Averse to EBR-Based Prerecorded Messages?
We begin, therefore, with the first question for analysis: whether consumer aversion to prerecorded calls does not apply when the calls are made to EBR customers. As the Commission previously stated, if consumers have little or no aversion to prerecorded calls to EBR customers, the fact that such calls avoid the twin harms of “hangups” and “dead air” would weigh heavily in favor of the adoption of a new safe harbor. [149] Almost all of the few consumer comments in the record that favored the prior safe harbor proposal for prerecorded calls confined their support for such calls to informational messages, [150] while the industry in effect took the position that the need for such informational messages required blanket approval of prerecorded telemarketing messages to EBR customers without an interactive opt-out mechanism. [151] The Commission therefore took pains to point out that purely informational messages are not “telemarketing” messages covered by the TSR. [152] However, as previo
