Regulators Probe British Gun Poll Survey After Colo. Shootings Requested Faxed Replies Costing $2.95 a Minute
By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 1999; Page A16
Federal regulators are investigating a British company that began distributing an unsolicited gun-control survey to millions of fax machines in the United States the day after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
The survey asked recipients if they wanted more effective gun-control laws and requested that replies be faxed back to a 900 telephone number, which the fine print disclosed cost $2.95 a minute. Most of the fees charged for such a call go to the company receiving the fax, in this case 21st Century Fax Ltd. The survey claimed the results would be shared with politicians, lawmakers and interest groups.
The fax has led to consumer complaints made to the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission, where regulators are studying whether the survey violates U.S. laws.
Dorothy Attwood, chief of the FCC common carrier bureau's enforcement division, said the agency was "concerned that potentially 3 million people out there have been exposed to this fax, which also seems to charge them if they call the number."
Attwood said the agency is looking into whether the fax violates the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits unsolicited commercial faxes. Such electronic solicitations have become an increasing problem, with the number of written complaints filed to the FCC climbing from 300 in 1992 to 3,000 last year.
The FTC also is investigating whether the faxes violate its rules for 900 numbers, which require clear disclosure that consumers must pay for the phone calls, Attwood said. The FTC declined to confirm that an investigation is pending.
Reached by phone in London, Gordon Ritchie, director of 21st Century Fax, said the gun-control poll involved nothing illegal or improper. The FCC's rules on unsolicited faxes "only apply to faxes from the U.S.," Ritchie said.
"We're covered by European laws," he said. "In the U.S. you can have guns but not faxes. Here, we can't have guns, but we can have faxes."
Ritchie said his company was sending the survey "to every American fax number we've got, and we've got 3 million numbers."
The survey, which was first sent on April 21, the day after the Littleton shootings, so far has been sent to more than 150,000 machines, mostly on the East Coast. The company started sending it to Midwest and West Coast fax numbers this week.
For each reply faxed to the 900 number, 21st Century Fax will make about $1.50 to $1.75 per minute in revenue, Ritchie said. He also noted that replies can also be sent to a Manhattan mail drop; the address is in fine print at the bottom of the survey, about half the size of the 900 number prominently displayed in the middle of the fax.
Karen Mosbaek, a receptionist at a Bethesda political consulting firm, was the first to see the survey at her company when she reviewed the incoming faxes last week. Initially, it sounded great, she said.
"With all the stuff going on in Colorado, I was thinking more should be done," she said. So Mosbaek checked "yes" -- that there should be more effective gun-control laws -- and started to return the fax. Then she discovered that the fax number had a 900 area code and that she would be charged $2.95 a minute, with most of that fee going to the company receiving the fax.
"I was very angry," Mosbaek said. "It's pretty sad for someone to try to make money off a tragedy like this."
But Ritchie said the company has "had no one complain, out of the thousands and thousands of responses, that 'you're making money out of the death of these poor school kids.' " He said he expected a response rate of about 6 percent -- which would result in revenue of more than $250,000 for his company.
Ritchie said the gun-control survey was the first American poll for 21st Century Fax, which sends about 8 million faxes a month to machines in Britain and Germany. The faxes range from polls on such topics as whether England should stay in the European Union to all sorts of advice, such as how to lose weight or reduce stress. Last year, the fax services provided almost $6 million in revenue and $1.2 million in profit, he said.
Ritchie said the poll is scientifically sound because he is sending out so many surveys. Pollsters in the United States disputed that, noting that it is not a random sample of people -- that instead the participants are self-selected. Indeed, Ritchie -- who said he strongly favors tighter gun-control laws -- conceded he would halt the poll if it appeared a majority voted against gun control, though at the moment the faxes are running overwhelmingly in favor of gun-control laws.
[Note the above -- he would "halt the poll" if his side was losing. Yeah, this is a "scientifically sound" way to take a poll. Scum-sucker.]
Earlier this year, British regulators obtained a temporary injunction against Ritchie and other officers of a sister company, 20th Century Fax Ltd. charging it with sending deceptive and misleading information in its faxes advising people to lose weight through the "Yummy Yum Yum Diet."
Ritchie said the diet does work and he will challenge the injunction next month in court.
Staff writer Liz Leyden in New York contributed to this report.