On April 12, AARP Maine sent a letter to its Maine members regarding LD 585, An Act to Remove Telemarketers from the Application of the Consumer Solicitation Sales Law. This letter requested that all Maine members contact their local legislators and senators and request that they vote against this bill.

I am a member of the American Association of Retired Persons. I am also a Maine community banker affected by AARP’s position and this letter really bothers me. I support AARP for being an advocate for the over-50 populace, but I shame them for playing Washington politics by sending a very misleading letter that only tells part of the story. Their allegations and the facts are as follows:

Allegation: This bill exempts all telemarketers.

Fact: This bill only exempts Maine-based supervised lenders (banks, credit unions, etc.), their affiliates and agents who are already regulated by the Bureau of Banking and the Office of Consumer Credit Regulation.

Allegation: An AARP member’s three-day cooling-off period is taken away.

Fact: Not so. Not only does the Federal Trade Commission already have regulations about it in place, but most supervised lenders that are doing telemarketing are mostly selling credit cards. If someone agrees over the phone to accept a credit card, it sure takes more than three days to receive that card by mail and then an 800 number must be called to activate the card.

This seems like more than enough time to reconsider the decision of whether or not to accept the card. Additionally, any home equity loans that are sold (using the borrower’s primary residence as collateral) require, by federal regulation, a three-day rescission (cooling-off) period.

Allegation: Nineteen states in addition to Maine require written contracts in telemarketing sales.

Fact: These 19 states exempt banks and credit unions from their law.

Allegation: This bill affects both out-of-state as well as in-state banks, credit unions and other banking subsidiaries.

Fact: This bill only affects Maine banks so out-of-state telemarketers can continue doing “business as usual in Maine.”

So, all of you readers who have already asked your legislators and senators to vote against this bill, please make another call to them and ask them to vote in favor of LD 585.

After you have done that, then write to Jud Dolphin, state director, AARP Maine, 307 Cumberland Ave., Portland 04101. Tell him he should be ashamed for misleading us about this bill and next time he writes such a letter he should give us all the information and not just part of it.

Don Means lives in Bristol.