Archives: Phones & Cell Phones

Unwanted, unsolicited faxes – often called "junk faxes" – are among the most expensive annoyances consumers and businesses face each day.  It is the receiver of the junk fax who literally pays the price for it – in toner and paper costs, in potential lost business because of a tied-up fax line, and in the nuisance cost of having to cull through a pile of junk faxes to find the legitimate faxes that they need. 

Under current law, junk faxes are illegal.  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) promulgated new rules that will make junk faxes more difficult to send.  These rules will go into effect on July 1, 2005.  The rules provide important consumer protections by obligating companies to receive signed, written consent before faxing a customer.  In anticipation of these rules, legitimate businesses have already reacted in pro-consumer ways, such as by offering incentives (in the form of coupons and discounts) to give this written consent and providing simple opt-out procedures for those who sign up but change their mind down the road.  

Some businesses have opposed the new rules, noting that receiving written consent is too burdensome for them, and that oral or online consent should count, too.  Congress has responded through the “Junk Fax Prevention Act,” which actually does not prevent junk faxes so much as allow legitimate faxes to go through.  A simpler fix would be to amend the FCC rules to allow for oral or written consent, ensuring that legitimate businesses could send faxes to their clients. 

For more information, read the testimony from the Senate Commerce Committee’s April 2005 hearing on junk faxes and read about how to stop junk faxes.  You can also read a Consumers Union/Consumer Federation of America letter (PDF) to the U.S. Senate on junk faxes.