The following is from a CBA privacy memo about Indiana's Telemarketing law. Our company has some limited business in Indiana. For those of you with branches in Indiana...do you have any additional information on the "do not call" requirements?
_________________________________________________

Indiana’s Do-Not-Call Law, One of Toughest in US

Indiana’s do-not-call law, which permits consumers to register their names on a list that prevents telemarketers from calling them is one of the toughest in the United States. The Indiana law does not allow an exception for financial organizations, nor is there an exemption for current customer relationships. Small and large banks alike claim the Indiana law is impeding their service with customers.

A Bank One government relations vice president, Steve Stivers said, “In this falling interest rate environment, we might give our customers some options for meeting with an investment representative, we might call them and say, ‘Look, we see you have a big balance. We have some options that might work for you.’ Unfortunately, under Indiana’s existing law we are not allowed to do that. Under Indiana’s law, that would be a sales call. To us, that would be a customer service call.”

Indiana bankers had anticipated that the Federal Trade Commission’s December 18th national do-not-call registry might preempt state laws, but it did not. The bankers still hope the FTC will decide to change their law or that the Indiana state legislature will relax its law.

Stu, I'm not well versed in the Telephone Privacy Law, but here is a link that may be of benefit to you.

RANT WARNING!!!

We are a small bank and do not have a telemarketing program.

As for as Mr Stivers' statement, "that would be a customer service call" is BS. I worked for Bank One for over 18 years, and I don't have a lot of respect for Bank One but that's a different issue, and every call they made was a sales call. That's Bank One's culture. There's nothing wrong with a sales culture if it's adminstered correctly, but when I was with them they were in a Hard Sale mode.

Mr. Stivers is not prevented from calling customers that has not registered under the Telephone Privancy Law, so he is still able to adminsiter his telemarketing to the ones who have not. IMO he doesn't want to spend the time nor money to sort out the ones that have.

AS for calling the customer with the big balance, that customer probably knows what his investment options are, and the options that Mr Stivers is wanting to sell may pay a little better return, but I'd bet it carries a lot higher fee also. Also, Mr Stivers didn't mention anything about customer service calls to the lower balance customers that they (the bank) may have a better option for, such as an account with lower service charges.

RANT OVER!