2025-01302. Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request; Extension

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Federal Trade Commission

AGENCY:

Federal Trade Commission.

ACTION:

Notice and request for comment.

SUMMARY:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requests that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) extend for three years the current Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) clearance for information collection requirements contained in the rules and regulations under the Pay-Per-Call Rule (Rule). That clearance expires on January 31, 2025.

DATES:

Comments must be received by February 20, 2025.

ADDRESSES:

Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to www.reginfo.gov/​public/​do/​PRAMain. Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. The reginfo.gov web link is a United States Government website produced by OMB and the General Services Administration (GSA). Under PRA requirements, OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviews Federal information collections.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

P. Connell McNulty, Attorney, Division of Marketing Practices, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, Mail Code CC-6316, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20580, [phone].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Title: Trade Regulation Rule Pursuant to the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act of 1992 (Pay-Per-Call Rule), 16 CFR part 308.

OMB Control Number: 3084-0102.

Type of Review: Extension of a currently approved collection.

Abstract: The existing reporting and disclosure requirements of the Pay-Per-Call Rule are mandated by the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act of 1992 (TDDRA) to help prevent unfair and deceptive acts and practices in the advertising and operation of pay-per-call services and in the collection of charges for telephone-billed purchases. The information obtained by the Commission pursuant to the reporting requirement is used for law enforcement purposes. The disclosure requirements ensure that consumers are told about the costs of using a pay-per-call service, that they will not be liable for unauthorized non-toll charges on their telephone bills, and how to deal with disputes about telephone-billed purchases.

Likely Respondents: telecommunications common carriers (subject to the reporting requirement only, unless acting as a billing entity), information providers (vendors) offering one or more pay-per-call services or programs, and billing entities.

Estimated Annual Hours Burden: 949,536 hours (24 + 949,512).

Reporting: 24 hours for reporting by common carriers.

Disclosure: 949,512 [(19,440 hours for advertising by vendors + 19,992 hours for preamble disclosure which applies to every pay-per-call service + 6,480 burden hours for telephone-billed charges in billing statements (applies to vendors; applies to common carriers if acting as billing entity) + 13,000 burden hours for dispute resolution procedures in billing statements (applies to billing entities) + 890,600 hours for disclosures related to consumers reporting a billing error (applies to billing entities)].

Estimated annual cost burden: $49,402,048 (solely relating to labor costs).^[1]

Request for Comment

On November 4, 2024, the FTC sought public comment on the information collection requirements associated with the Rule. 89 FR 87575.^[2] The Commission received one germane comment, which supported the continued collection of information under the Rule. The Commission received a second comment that mischaracterized the Commission's November 4, 2024 Notice and request for comment as a notice of proposed rulemaking. The commenter asserted that the Commission's Notice raised constitutional and “statutory overreach” concerns. The Commission's Notice, as discussed, sought public comment on ( print page 7140) existing information collection requirements associated with the Rule, which the Commission has undertaken for years and seeks to continue. It did not concern a proposed rulemaking. Pursuant to the OMB regulations, 5 CFR part 1320, that implement the PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq., the FTC is providing this second opportunity for public comment while seeking OMB approval to renew the pre-existing clearance for the Rules.

Your comment—including your name and your state—will be placed on the public record of this proceeding. Because your comment will be made public, you are solely responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any sensitive personal information, such as anyone's Social Security number; date of birth; driver's license number or other state identification number, or foreign country equivalent; passport number; financial account number; or credit or debit card number. You are also solely responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any sensitive health information, such as medical records or other individually identifiable health information. In addition, your comment should not include any “trade secret or any commercial or financial information which . . . is privileged or confidential”—as provided by Section 6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 4.10(a)(2)—including in particular competitively sensitive information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas, patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.

Josephine Liu,

Assistant General Counsel for Legal Counsel.

Footnotes

1.  Non-labor ( e.g., capital/other start-up) costs are generally subsumed in activities otherwise undertaken in the ordinary course of business ( e.g., business records from which only existing information must be reported to the Commission, pay-per-call advertisements or audiotext to which cost or other disclosures are added, etc.). To the extent that entities incur operating or maintenance expenses, or purchase outside services to satisfy the Rule's requirements, staff believe those expenses are also included in (or, if contracted out, would be comparable to) the annual burden hour and cost estimates provided below (where such costs are labor-related), or are otherwise included in the ordinary cost of doing business (regarding non-labor costs).

2.  On November 27, 2024, the FTC filed a Notice to correct an incorrect date in its Notice of November 4, 2024; namely that the current PRA clearance expires on January 31, 2025, and not January 30, 2024. See 89 FR 93602.