Psss8230;message received

After the recent Supreme Court notice to banks, financial institutions and mobile service providers ordering them to stop unsolicited marketing calls to customers, the cellphones may have stopped ringing as far as marketing calls are concerned, but the number of SMSs beeping in still continues. In fact, some believe that the volumes of non-voice marketing or SMSs have actually gone up.

8216;8216;In the past few months, the volume of marketing calls from my mobile service provider has decreased but the marketing calls made by banks and other financial institutions are more or less the same,8217;8217; says Shirish Deshpande, a consumer rights activist in Mumbai. He agrees that calls from service providers have now been converted into SMSs.

But if telemarketing calls can infringe on your privacy, can SMS do so too? The legal fraternity surely believes so. 8216;8216;Whether you make a call, or send an SMS, the basic principle is the same, it amounts to invasion of privacy. These SMSs are like unwanted mails, like spam,8217;8217; says Hitesh Jain, partner at law firm Udwadia and Udeshi. 8216;8216;Usually, banks and mobile companies pass on8212; or sell8212;this information to the marketing companies. But passing on info per se won8217;t be illegal,8217;8217; he adds.

8216;8216;The SMSs that I have received in the past few months have gone up drastically. In most cases I cannot even reply as the source is unknown,8217;8217; laments Shenoy.

He is supported by Achintya Mukherjee, Jt Secretary, Bombay Telephone Users Society, who says: 8220;There are so many other means to direct sell your products, one does not necessarily need to send SMSs to solicit business.8221; Mukherjee8212;who is part of a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India TRAI committee8212; plans to take up the issue with the regulator in a meeting scheduled later this month.

8216;8216;I firmly believe that even the regulator TRAI is with the service provider rather than with the consumers8230; hence we are left with just one option: To knock on the doors of law,8217;8217; he adds.

While the non-voice marketing bombardment continues, most service providers are vouching for their innocence.

Says an Airtel official, 8216;8216;as a service provider, we cannot do anything. Most of the time the company marketing the product does it through a marketing agency. These marketing agencies could get the numbers from anywhere, and they can send the SMSs through websites too. Given that, how can we be held responsible?8217;8217; 8216;8216;We are ready to take action against anyone if our customer complains either through our call centre or write to us,8217;8217; the official adds.

But there are some who believe that SMS is the most non-intrusive way of marketing. 8216;8216;I don8217;t see any problem with SMS, they are very discrete and do not infringe on anyone8217;s privacy,8217;8217; says TV Ramachandran, president, Cellular Operators Association of India, COAI.

After all, he counters, 8216;8216;telemarketing is a legitimate activity.8217;8217; Till such time as the regulator or the law comes out with some concrete privacy related laws, plugging some obvious loopholes, it is once again the consumer who is at the receiving end.