The IT Nerd

If you’re Canadian and you’re sick of scum telemarketers calling you (usually around dinner time), you now have a way to reduce those annoying calls. The CRTC has started a “do not call” list that Canadians can sign up to stop unwanted calls, faxes, and recorded messages from a variety of telemarketers. You can register your landline, cell phone and fax via this service and the annoying calls should be reduced within a month (or so they say). More on that later.

You can register in one of two ways:

• Call one of these toll-free numbers: 1-866-580-3625 or 1-888-362-5889. You’ll need to call from the phone you’re registering. Please note that as I write this, these numbers are next to impossible to get through on.
• Surf to https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/ and register your numbers there. Please note that as I write this, the site is being Slashdotted.

It’s free, and the service runs 24/7. If you need to talk to an operator to file a complaint, you should call between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Now back to something I mentioned earlier. By signing up to this service, calls will be reduced but not eliminated. Why’s that? It’s simple. Charities, newspapers, political parties, pollsters and companies with whom you’ve done business in the past 18 months are all exempt from the do-not-call list. But in theory, you should be able to ask them not to call anymore and they’re required by law to stop calling within a month. Also, American companies can still call because they’re not covered under our laws. Good luck trying to get them to stop calling. But with the exception of the Americans, if a someone doesn’t stop calling, they can be fined of up to $1,500 for a person and $15,000 for a corporation.

I should mention that Bell Canada is managing this list. I have to admit that this bothers me as I think that private industry shouldn’t be managing this list. Not to mention that Bell isn’t at the top of my Christmas card list for a variety of reasons (*cough* Throttling *cough*).

I guess we’ll see how this plays out.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada, CRTC, telemarketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.