Do Not Call Listings to Expire in 2008

Ant writes "Yahoo! News report that the cherished dinner hour void of telemarketers could vanish next year for millions of people when phone numbers begin dropping off the national/United States (U.S.)'s Do Not Call list. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which oversees the list, says there is a simple fix. But some lawmakers think it is a hassle to expect people to re-register their phone numbers every five years. Numbers placed on the registry, begun in June 2003, are valid for five years. For the millions of people who signed onto the list in its early days, their numbers will automatically drop off beginning next June if they do not enroll again."

Comments

Not that tricky

[PlatyPaul]

Signing up on a web form every 5 years - 10 minutes Avoiding telemarketing phone calls during dinner, sex, and sleep - Priceless.

Re:Not that tricky

[antifoidulus]

Man, you have a regular eating schedule, get laid, and actually have time to sleep instead of spending all nighters at the office? I have to call your geek credentials into question.....

Just out of curiosity, have you tried doing all 3 of those at the same time?

Simple

[awkScooby]

They should just hire some telemarketers to call people during dinner, to see if they would like to re-register for the do not call list...

Thanks

[jtroutman]

Thanks for the reminder, I just re-signed up. Can you post this story again in five years so I'll remember to do it then to?

Irony continued...

[packetmon]

So I tried to call my local representative to have a word in with him about this and he hung up claiming he was on some form of Do Not Call list. Can you imagine that?

Re:Does the DNC list even mean anything?

[mhall119]

Even during the rest of the year we frequently get calls from somebody that isn't on the other end of the phone, usually all I get is a click and several seconds of silence. Those I just hang up on, if they can't be bothered to be present when I answer, I'm certainly not going to consider it important enough to wait for them to come to the phone. A better solution is to _not_ hang up, because once you hang up it frees a phone line for them to call someone else, every second you keep the line open reduces their call rate, which reduces the money they make. I frequently ask telemarketers to "hold on just a second" and put the phone on the table for like 5 minutes. Amusingly, sometimes the telemarketer is still there waiting, in which case I tell them "sorry, I'll be just one more second" and go about whatever I was doing for another 5-10 minutes.