Tippie Alumnus Comments on "Do Not Call" List

Thomas Cardella, graduate of the Tippie College Executive MBA program and chairman and CEO of Precision Response and Access Direct, recently appeared on the Nightly Business Report on PBS, commenting on the national "do not call" list for telemarketers. Cardella's companies, Precision Response and Access Direct, handle customer calls for Fortune 500 companies. While some telemarketers may be complaining about the "do not call" list, not everyone in the industry opposes it. In fact, Cardella argues that the list makes a lot of sense. Nightly Business Report anchor Jeff Yastine asked Cardella if he was surprised that the federal government is hanging up on unwanted telemarketing calls.

"It really doesn't surprise me at all," Cardella said. "I think it's important to understand that the consumer views or the politicians and the media tend to view telemarketers all as one entity. And that's not the case. You have companies like Access Direct and Precision Response Corporation and Hancock Information Group that are calling consumers that have an existing relationship with the client. And out of every 10 people we speak with, three to five people will end up purchasing a product over the phone. You then have a lot of companies that don't have relationships with the consumers. And what they're doing is is they are just placing call after call after call hoping to get one in a hundred, maybe one half of one person in a hundred to purchase a product. And those types of calls start to annoy the consumer over time. I think this legislation was needed to help control some of that. "

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