Call Abandonment, Predictive Dialers and the Abandonment Safe Harbor
The TSR prohibits abandoned calls - no live rep within two seconds of the greeting. A safe harbor allows abandonment of no more than 3% of answered calls, measured per day per campaign, with ring time of 15 seconds/four rings and a recorded ID message.
The TSR prohibits telemarketers from abandoning outbound calls with hang-ups or 'dead air.' A call is abandoned if the telemarketer does not connect a live rep within two seconds of the person's completed greeting. Predictive dialer use is a common cause.
Prerecorded-message telemarketing also violates the TSR (no live rep within two seconds), unless the company has the consumer's prior express consent (opt-in) for prerecorded sales messages.
(1) Abandonment of no more than 3% of calls answered by a live person, per day per campaign; (2) ring for 15 seconds or four rings before disconnecting; (3) play a recorded message with the seller's name and number when no rep is available within two seconds; (4) keep records documenting compliance.
The 3% limit is measured per day, per calling campaign. A telemarketer running simultaneous campaigns for different sellers may not average abandonment rates across them. Machine-answered, unanswered and nonworking-number calls do not count.