Nevadans eagerly join Do Not Call list

Suzanne Struglinski and Mary Manning

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2003 | 11:02 a.m.

Barbara Freitas' Las Vegas phone is one of more than 288,000 in Nevada that telemarketers will be forbidden to call beginning Oct. 1.

"I signed up the first day," Freitas said. "You just get so tired of this, it's very annoying."

A lot of other Nevadans apparently feel the same way.

According the Federal Trade Commission, 288,294 Nevada phone numbers had signed up for the national Do Not Call Registry as of Monday. Of those 81,000 registered by phone and 208,000 via the Internet.

As of Oct. 1, telemarketers who dial people on the Do Not Call list are subject to fines of $11,000 per call.

Those signed up for the registry represent about a fifth of the residential lines in the state, but personal cell phones are also eligible to be added to the list.

President Bush approved the federal registry on March 11, although the legislation creating the list passed several years ago. Since registration opened on June 27, about 30 million people have registered.

The federal law limits interstate telemarketing calls, although calls from political groups, charities and surveys can still be made.

The federal law would still have allowed telemarketing operations within Nevada to continue calling Nevadans.

That loophole was closed when Gov. Kenny Guinn signed Assembly Bill 232 on June 10. That legislation allows the attorney general to use the national Do Not Call list as the mechanism to prohibit telemarketing calls made within Nevada to Nevada residents, so consumers need to sign up only once to avoid the calls.

Attorney General spokesman Tom Sargent explained that under the law, the state has until Jan. 1 to decide if it will stick to just using the national registry or if it would create its own list.

He said the state will monitor the federal list to see if it is working properly before determining if the state needs its own list. Whether people are satisfied with the national list and its enforcement will be the main factor in deciding to move forward with the state list, Sargent said.

He said the only reason to have two lists would be if "the federal list isn't cutting it."

Daniel and Milagros Molat of Henderson have their home phone number on the federal list and, like state officials, they said they're willing to wait and see how well the list works.

"The federal list is fine for now," Milagros Molat said.