Sometime last Fall our Canadian Government finally got around to creating an official “Do Not Call” website where Canadian residents could go and add their home or even their cell phone numbers to a list that would supposedly be checked by telemarketers and keep you off their call lists.
Sounds great right? Finally a way to get those pesky telemarketers to stop calling our home at all ours of the day and evening.
Uh huh …
Guess what? Just about anyone can register as a “telemarketing firm” by paying a $50 fee. Once they’re registered they can access the list and copy it. That’s fine if it’s a legitimate telemarketing business in Canada who’s trying to abide by the Do not Call laws. However, since just about anyone can register as a telemarketer and it’s not checked an unscrupulous person could sign up, download the list and then sell it to marketers in other countries who don’t have to obey our Canadian telemarketing laws and regulations.
If you live in Canada you’ve probably seen new stories from January onward talking about how the Do Not Call list is being abused.
Chris and I added our number to the list in either late November or early December. By the end of January we started to get even more calls from telemarketers than we normally do! I’ve always been hesitant to pick up the phone when I don’t recognize the number, so what I’ve been doing is checking out all the 1-800 numbers that are calling on the internet.
Some of the calls we are getting are from companies that just call to see if anyone answers the phone and if someone does they know the number is live and they turn around and sell the phone number to other marketers! Other calls are from scam companies stating they can lower your credit card interest rates or provide an extended warranty for your car (even though they don’t even know if you have a car or if it’s a 25 year old clunker!), others are calls stating that “you’ve won a free trip” or membership cards to gyms or membership stores.
It’s a pain in the butt! I don’t sleep well at night so I sometimes sleep late into the morning. I can’t even do that anymore because the calls start as early at 8 am and go on until almost 10 pm! These days we try to remember to unplug the phone late at night before we go to bed and then I plug it back in once I’m up.
There’s a number on the Canadian Do Not Call list website that you can call and have your phone number removed. I already had our number removed about two weeks ago, but the calls are still coming. I shouldn’t have added our home phone number to the list in the first place … God only knows how many illegal telemarketing lists our number has been listed on in the three or so months that we were on the list.
If you’re in Canada were you silly enough to add your home number to the do not call list? And if you are elsewhere do you also have a do not call list that telemarketers in your Country are supposed to abide by?
Don’t you just hate telemarketing and survey calls?
I put my number on the U.S. “Do Not Call” list a few years ago, and never got another call. It’s great! Don’t know why the Canadian version wouldn’t be the same. Even better, when I went completely mobile and dumped my landline, even fewer people call me. I highly recommend it!
I hear you — do not call really doesn’t work that well in the United States either. They seem to have all the “exceptions” to this rule down pat including if you buy a product from them at some point, you’ll be kept on their list. Forever.
One way to get around the trouble is caller i.d. If someone rings us and we don’t recognize the phone number, we NEVER pick up. Of course, we occasionally miss the surprise caller (like a family member with a new number) but we can call them right back after checking our messages.
That’s a real cheat, Tricia!
Tricia,
There’s been a lot of misleading press about this.
The low cost to download the list is only for one area code. Anyone accessing multiple area codes or all of Canada needs to pay a much higher price. The reason for the low price is for small businesses to be able to continue to serve their clients (think avon sales, and the like). The payment makes a trail to help locate abusers if waranted. The list is sold outside of canada as well to allow legitimate businesses to not irritate people that don’t want calls. (To not allow them to get the list would actually be worse!)
There was a survey last released resently that showed that most people are actually seing a reduction in calls, and that there has been an increase in calls from out of the country using “war dialers” for scamming people. This is a technique where automated callers try every combination of numbers. Apparently the recession is making some more desparate. Scam calls aren’t the same as telemarketting calls. They need to be reported. You can report them to the DNCL, or straight to phone busters.
Also note that the do not call list only ever asked you for a phone number. There is no personal information linked to than number from the list. Either a caller knows you, or they don’t.
We put our names on the “Do not call list” and I must say it has been working great! The number of calls has went way down in the last year. I agree that it is very annoying and I am glad the “Do not call list” does work!
I used to work at a place where we did surveys, and to inform all of you the Do not call list in Canada, at least, is only for the telemarketing people and not does who does surveys.
Do Not Call is a scam. The same numbers, the same number of calls come through no matter whether you are registered or not. It is a false sense of protection. Furthermore, when you try to file a complaint with DNC about it, you really can’t. Scam, scam, scam. I personally believe the site is just a way for someone “out there” to collect more phone numbers. Chew on that for a second. It will only take a second to see how that could work out really, really well for someone.