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Canada's Do-Not-Hesitate-To-Call List
An anonymous reader writes "The creation of a do-not-call list in Canada has run into
trouble. Michael Geist reports that the proposal has been effectively destroyed, with exceptions for just about every telemarketer including businesses, political parties, polling companies, and charities. The government committee apparently heard from the marketers but refused to listen to consumer groups."
Canada is a capitalist nation, just like most modern nations. Just because you live in Canada doesn't exempt you from having your "rights" and concerns over-ridden with the more important rights and concerns of revenue making, tax-paying, politician lobbying private industries.
"Telemarketing" == "Phone SPAM"
I suggest you read Slashdot
I've found do-not-call to be *extremely* effective. Have you followed through using your rights under the law? Tell solicitor to never call you again, log the conversation, and make official complaint when they do (which is >$1,000 fine)? Do you inform them that you are on the do-not-call registry?
just do what I did, and get cell plan where you get refund for received calls. I've almost paid my last months phone bill, just by talking with telemarketers. You can easily keep them talking for about 30 minutes by asking everything about the product they're selling.
A) Can you provide a link to the plan you are talking about.
B)Laast time I checked, it was illegal in the US for telemarketers to call cell phones.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
If you hang up, they just go on to the next person. IIRC, they only need one sucker per 3,000-10,000 calls to for telemarketing to be profitable. If you want to have an impact, be more like a rude American. Lead them on, but don't commit to anything. If they want to confirm your name or address, tell them about your pets/children/last bowel movement, or whatever takes up time. I used to keep a headset on the kitchen phone so I could cook while wasting a ton of their time. 10-30 minutes on the phone without making a sale is going to make them look bad.
"Government program fails to help taxed consumers."
"Law turns rare victims into frequent ones."
"Elected officials support their real constituents."
When has any regulation on industry regulated anyone but the non-business owner? All regulations are created for one reason: scarcity.
Government created scarcity increases profits by decreasing wealth. Regulations keep favored businesses safe from new competition.
There are many free market programs to reduce phone spam. On my cell, I create favored call lists and "everyone else." The everyone else ring tone is silent. If a voice mail confirms I missed a favored caller, I'll add them to the ring list.
No one needs any form of regulation from government at any level as they all create favoritism and don't fix any problem. Even pollution regulations are better controlled by the free market. Heavy polluters get blasted by watchdog groups, cleaner emitters get praised and consumers make the decision who succeeds and who fails.
I bumped into a guy via a cellphone mailing list, whose company has a dialling product that hangs up if it detects a human at the other end. But if it detects an answerphone, it delivers its advert. You have to wonder about people who actually design something like that, and the client companies that think it's the best way to get the message across. The guy does stuff for IBM, which we certainly filed away for future reference.
Umm.. I don't want to be called by anyone. This includes political parties, charities (thanks, I already donate hundreds of dollars yearly to local community groups, the Red Cross, and others I deem fit), and I am prefectly capable of finding the best goods/services to fit my needs on my own.
I already know enough about our political system to know that our form of democracy is badly broken. I don't need their "information".
Is it really too much to ask to be left alone?
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Good idea, except, this article is about Canadian law. The page you linked to is U.S.
-FL
The way I think it works out now is that if you sign on to the Canadian Do-Not-Call list you will only receive calls from businesses, political parties, polling companies, and charities.
Seriously though, isn't that just true of landlines in general? Has anyone received a useful call on a landline in the past few years, one where the caller would not have called your mobile if they hadn't got through?
If the call is important, someone will pay 50p/min to call my mobile, or they'll call me on my mobile for free as part of their bundled mobile minutes. If they'll only call my landline, the call can't be important.
The solution to telemarketting is to price them out of the market. One way is to waste their time. Another is; don't answer your landline. Just use your mobile. Heck, half the time I don't even have a handset connected to my landline. It just exists to provide ADSL.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Not answering or hanging up quickly is actually the nicest thing you can do for them, short of buying what they're pitching. They are paying for employees and equipment by the minute. Assuming you're not paying by the minute for calls you receive, it's better to answer the phone and give them some plausible reason to hang on ("Oh, you want to talk to Dave! Hang on a sec"). Then set the handset down and see how long they wait. You could keep track of what bs line will keep them waiting the longest.
Over here, the politicians go out to public places and meet the public. People can go up and talk to them, and they talk back to you. You can even go to the booths and troll them a bit, you know, catch them off-guard with questions they can't answer (and they even admit to not being able to answer them.) They have a lot of ways of getting their message out. They don't need to harass people over the phone. The Norwegian populace is otherwise generally very educated and very informed.
And then you have other countries (not going to mention any names) where the politicians have bodyguards to keep the yucky proletarians away, and the only questions that are asked have been prepared ahead of time, and asked by people who were specially selected ahead of time. Unlike in other countries, where political organizations hire their little cronies to harass people on the phone.
So I'll repeat myself - I don't give a shit about anyone who feels they have some kind of right to harass me over the phone - whether it be to sell their shit or push their dumbass political agenda (back in the US it was usually various flavors of halleluja-freakballs that called). They can all fucking get ebola and die!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Get a digital answering machine like the one I have, which will route caller ID blocked calls straight to "leave a message" mode. If you hear the mother-in-law, you can pick up. Or just let her leave a message, if she doesn't like it she'll learn to dial the right number, won't she?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Such a "right" exists only in your imagination.
Furthermore, it takes a fair bit of imagination to suggest that political pressure groups are interested in educating people, instead of pushing a view through any means possible including freely misleading people. I think I'd rather get my information from a broad spectrum of sources -- the Economist, NPR Morning Edition, the NYT, News.com, the BBC, AP, Reuters, AFP, UPI, the Washington Post, factcheck.org, the news.google aggregate, thomas.loc.gov... rather than some "activist" who's trying to read a script at me in order to get a contribution to his organization. Not to mention that in terms of government power, well, I'm the sort of weirdo who reads about Stalinism, the intertwined feudal dictatorships of lord and priest, and Machiavelli, for his own enjoyment. So I'm not some bloody naive statist who's too optimistic for his own good while blithely believing politicans' -- or critics' -- press releases.
Care to send me information? Then send it in a readable format where your assertions are recorded, and with corroborating detail, for confirmation or ridicule on my own damn time. But cold-calling me to suggest that drunk drivers are really terrorists; that abortion is somehow a first-order issue which should be decided based on chants and marches, not the Constitution; or that God will forsake America if we don't down libbberal "activist" judges is only going to educate me that you're probably just another dime-a-dozen extremist.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
...is telemarketers have to be creative. Have the CEO stand for some election, or something, then the company can claim to be political. Or have the company sponsor a charity, so the "primary purpose" of the call becomes publicising the charity - the sales pitch is merely an extra.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> However, telephone solicitation is very important to business, to charities, and to
> political organizations. How do we balance their needs with citizens' wants?
How much value is there in calling people who adamantly do not wish to be called?
> I think it's very important that political groups especially are allowed to reach out to
> people in the community.
Why political groups especially? What in your view makes them more special than other groups? Is it because you are concerned about political issues? If so, can't it be argued that charities have an equally legitimate concern with social issues?
> Unfortunately, most people here in the US are ridiculously undereducated about political issues.
No argument. What makes you believe that phone calls are an effective solution to this problem?
> What I'd like to see is a proscription against soliciting over the phone, so that information could still be passed along.
Define solicitation for this purpose. Dictionary.com defines this as:
---
1. To seek to obtain by persuasion, entreaty, or formal application: a candidate who solicited votes among the factory workers.
2. To petition persistently; importune: solicited the neighbors for donations.
3. To entice or incite to evil or illegal action.
4. To approach or accost (a person) with an offer of sexual services.
---
We can eliminate #4, and #3 is useless without defining 'evil'. But what you propose seem to me to fit both 1 and 2.
It seems as if you wish to permit soliciting permission to contact again, and requiring this before soliciting (funds, votes, purchasing, etc) in earnest begins.
> This would help reduce how much certain subsets of the population are taken advantage of by telemarketers.
So would eliminating all calls. I would favor allowing people to opt out entirely.
> It's not that hard to hang up the phone, or to screen calls. I've set my phone to ring silently
> if the call is from someone not in my caller ID. I erase telemarketer numbers every couple days.
Actually, you're wrong here. "It's not that hard to hang up the phone..." if and only if a -human being- calls you. If the call is like the majority I get, it is being dialed by a machine, which routes it to a person only -after- you pick up. Often, there is no person available, so I get several dozen calls followed by dead silence before getting the opportunity to tell them not to call again.
"...or to screen calls. I've set my phone to ring silently if the call is from someone not in my caller ID..." -if- you can filter all calls by caller ID. I can't; the majority of legitimate calls I get are from people who have caller ID blocked. Refusing to pick up would (eventually) be the same as saying "I quit; send me my last paycheck."
> At this point, at least here in the US, I am very against any action that would limit political
> participation -- it's low enough already.
I don't view cold calling people who don't want to be called as "political participation." YMMV, but please accept that you are applying your own definitions to some common terms. A search of Google on "political participation definition" returns this definition, which pretty much matches mine: "becoming involved in activities such as voting, running for political office, signing petitions and other activities which help citizens make an impact on public or political issues."
While cold calling may certainly be included in "other activities" the fact that it isn't given it's own place in this definition would imply that it isn't central, but peripheral. Again, this is just my definition; but aren't you using just your definition?
> Polling and grassroots campaigning are vital to how our political system operates today, and should not be abrogated.
They aren't being abrogated. But why does -anyone- have the r
If the people of Canada don't like this they have simple recourse. Vote the government out in the next election and vote one in that will listen to their wishes. Government around the world, especially the UK, have forgotten that they are supposed to serve the people, not their own interests. The people need to take an interest and vote. If you don't vote, you don't have a right to complain later.
The difference is that when its a business, competition eventually provides a safer product. Company A bends the rules and gets caught, Company B plays fair and grows.
With government, there IS no competition. They are a monopoly
First of all, "eventually" is not good enough when it comes to life and death.
Secondly, what magical process is preventing a Corporate monopoly in your regulations-free world?
The monopolies of the past were broken up by those governments you dislike so. Standard Oil, for example...
And as for what happens when you deregulate... remember the rolling brownouts of california when they deregulated power?
Remember the giant international blackout caused by deregulated pruning of the trees around Ohio's powerlines?
There is no basis in reality to this fantasy that businesses would make a safer world if only the regulations were removed. In fact, it's pretty consistent that they do the opposite. The regulations came about precisely because busonesses were NOT working towards the common good, but in fact (shock!) were only working for profit.
I bet you think that tobacco companies provide a safer product through competition or something? And not, you know, an addictive poison.
You can't take the sky from me...
Because they're not. I want to be left alone. And these useless asshats who want to harass me with their filth better damn well respect that. If I want information, I know where to get it.
And why should I have to be the one wasting my energy in calling everyone, telling them not to call me?
As for the private do-not-call list, what a joke! Do you reallly trust private industry with such a thing? Oh wait, I know the answer to that...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...