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(Washington-AP) -- To help consumers ward off pesky telemarketers, the government reportedly has picked one of the worst offenders.
The Federal Trade Commission recently awarded a three-and-a-half (m) million-dollar contract to a division of A-T-and-T to build and run the new national "do not call" list for people who don't want to receive sales calls.
Now, The Washington Post is reporting that A-T-and-T has been the source of the largest number of complaints about telemarketers that consumers have made to regulators in recent years.
The paper points to data from the Federal Communications Commission, showing it received more than 57-hundred complaints about A-T-and-T's telemarketing in 2001, 2002 and during the first three months of this year.
An A-T-and-T spokesman says the level of complaints reflects the company's size.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
