Telemarketing

Telemarketing means calling people who haven't asked for anything, to sell them a product or service. It's precisely because the call is unsolicited that it's regulated: in France it's only permitted on weekdays between 8:30 AM and 8 PM, with the obligation to display a real number (masked numbers have been banned since 2023), to identify the calling company, and to respect registration on the Bloctel opt-out list.

In the US, the equivalent revolves around the National Do Not Call Registry and the TCPA, with per-call fines. The distinction that matters for a local business: answering an inbound call is never telemarketing, and neither is calling back a customer who contacted you. The line is the absence of a request — you only cross it by cold-calling strangers.