Nixon and Stoll urge addition of business, cell phone numbers to No Call law

Attorney General Jay Nixon and state Sen. Steve Stoll, (D) Festus, today announced legislation that will allow business owners and cell phone users to add their phone numbers to Missouri’s No Call list. The current Missouri No Call law allows only residential phone numbers on the list.

“The three million Missourians on the No Call list have told us they don’t want telemarketing calls at home. If you don’t want to be bothered at home, you certainly don’t have time for wasteful phone calls at work or on your cell phone,” Nixon said at a news conference in St. Louis.

“Protecting the time of business and wireless phone customers will help Missourians be more productive and thus make a positive contribution to the economy,” Sen. Stoll said, joining Nixon at the news conference.

Bills with the proposed revisions to the No Call law are being filed in both the House and Senate. Sen. Stoll is the sponsor of the Senate bill. The house bill has the bi-partisan sponsorship of state Rep. David Pearce, (R) Warrensburg, vice chair of the House Committee on Job Creation and Economic Development, and state Rep. D. J. Davis, (D) Odessa.

The Attorney General’s No Call enforcement unit continues to vigorously pursue telemarketers that break the No Call law. Since July 2001, the state has collected $1,088,000 in fines from companies that violate the law.

This week Nixon reached an agreement with another company that broke the law. 3M Management Co., a St. Louis mortgage company doing business as Challenge Financial investment Corp., agreed to stop making telemarketing calls to Missourians and paid $5,000 to the state. The company’s owner, Steven Frost, also agreed not to make telemarketing calls to Missourians for any other company without first obtaining Missouri’s No Call list.