First in a series of articles, well explore various issues and practices associated with modern ways of selling over the phone.

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Whenever we speak of telemarketing, we cant ignore the 900-pound gorilla that is smack in the middle of the room. This critter is the sordid history of the field that resulted in restrictive legislation and formation of the Do Not Call Registry.

Why did legislators at all levels of government jump on the bandwagon to restrict calls made to residences?

I believe it had less to do with the times and places of calls, than is popularly believed.

Yes, many people were called at home at the dinner hour, but if it werent for the fact that conversations were inherently abusive, that they were built on a command-and-control communication style, I think wed still be living in a relatively unregulated environment.

Telemarketers abused the conditional privilege of entering peoples homes: fundamentally they were impolite, and so they were booted out.

And the people who were most offended and disgusted were precisely the folks who you dont want on your case, mobilized to punish you: older Americans, who were raised in a more polite era, and who have endless time on their hands to call and to write and to lobby their legislators for relief.

Moreover, technology simply exacerbated the problem, enabling countless calls to be aimed at people, efficiently. Predictive dialers would drop calls when phones went unanswered for a certain number of rings, and at times when no telemarketers were available to converse.

Old folks, in those days without wireless capabilities, would take pains to get up to reach the ringing line, only to have it stop before they could pick it up. Worrying about the call they missed, they would fret over or actually feel terrorized by uncertainty.

Geriatrics were also lonely and in many cases, financially secure enough to write checks, and this combination made them great targets for scams, and they were disproportionately victimized by con artists.

Add these practices up and you have a formula for reform, and thats exactly what happened.

Everyone could see it coming, but few did anything significant to avoid the storm.

That would have entailed adopting The New Telemarketing, which wasnt widely available at the time.