Geist Creates His Own Do-Not-Call List

average_cdn writes "Canadians looking to put a stop to pesky telemarketing calls before the federal government's do-not-call registry takes effect this summer have a new tool at their disposal. At IOptOut.ca, Canadians can enter their phone number and e-mail address and simply choose the organizations they would prefer not to hear from while the website generates a mass request that the user be added to those companies' do-not-call lists. The site, a beta version of which was launched yesterday, is the brainchild of University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist and features information on how to avoid telemarketing calls from more than 140 different companies and organizations. Mr. Geist said that iOptOut helps Canadians finish the job that the do-not-call registry failed to complete."

Comments

Very cool!

[RobinH]

Very cool, I'll probably tell my family about this.

However, I've noticed that since we moved two years ago, and we got a Vonage account, we don't actually get any unsolicited calls (except for the cable company which keeps trying to sell us their home phone service, but that has mostly stopped). I think it's either because we're not in the Bell directory, or because if I go over 500 minutes a month, then I pay some per minute charge, and that technically makes it illegal for telemarketers to call me, just like cell phones.

Re:Very cool!

[cybereal]

One thing I do is I say "Just a moment". Then I leave the phone off the hook for about ten minutes. This wastes their time quite effectively. I even had one of them get quite angry at me, which was good.

Due to unfortunate requirement for food, water, and shelter, I had to be a telemarketer for several years. Truly this was the most painful job I've ever had, and I've worked at Taco Bell. Your strategy of leaving the phone off the hook for a while is not remotely unique. But I assure you, many telemarketers appreciate it. Seriously.

What you may fail to recognize is that telemarketing is a slave driving business. The people on the phone, we didn't make squat off the sales. What we did was maintain our right to continue working a complete day. If you didn't maintain a certain quota, they would simply send you home. And the wages? Well there was this fancy thing called a "differential." What that meant was, if you made X hours in the pay period, your wage would be increased by Y dollars. So to make the meager 7.25/hr. I was told I'd be making, I'd have to work at least 60 of the 80 hours possible in a two week period. Obviously not a difficult thing to do in a normal job but..

Imagine for a moment that you made just enough money to get by, you had maybe $30 a week after all of your bills were paid to buy groceries for you, your wife, and your daughter. You worked as a cold calling sales person, constantly searching but never finding another, more reasonable job. IN the meantime, you went to work each day, starting at 7 am to call the east coast, and sell things that nobody in their right mind would ever want to buy. If you did not make at least two sales per hour on average, you would be sent home before lunch time. Now imagine that, despite working very hard, your two weeks came up and you missed the mark. Suddenly your paycheck wasn't only less because of fewer hours, no, your rate was 30% less, putting you around 50% of what you would normally have made. What the hell would you do?

Not all callcenters are this bad, not all phone jobs as painful, but many are and I hope some of you can have a better understanding of the tenacity of phone sales people.

Oh and another aspect more relevant to your "method" is that the calls must be made constantly. Non-stop, save a few very short breaks throughout the day for the restroom. That means that the moment you hang up, the phone immediately calls another person. In fact, when enough agents are on the floor, the phone system PRE-DIALS so that when you click off one call, you're IMMEDIATELY on another. This goes on all day long. You try that sometime, and tell me how you feel after several months of it. So trust me when I say, that 10 minute break your telemarketer risked enduring was a godsend to them.

Re:Very cool!

[billcopc]

The problem with any "bad" job is people continue to work there.

If call centers suck so bad, why do people take the jobs ? You're encouraging the abuse by enabling these bureaucratic slave drivers. I don't know of anyone who likes call centers, not as an employee, not as a victim either. The only people who like them are the so-called "clients", the ones whose products are being sold or supported, because not only is it cheap, but it also cuts maintenance costs thanks to the many people who would rather buy a new thingamajig than have to deal with retarded call center queues all afternoon.

One thing is consistent: there are always companies looking to hire, in fact many of them complain that it's so hard to find good people. I know why: they're all pissing their life away in a call center for peanuts, while the good jobs go unfilled. If you've got the social skills, patience and computer smarts to survive a call center job, those same skills could be applied in just about any other office environment for less stress and maybe even more money.

Shit, I know a lot of people sitting in cushy government jobs who barely have two brain cells to rub together. They wouldn't last a day working for a telemarketer, yet they're making four times as much money for a quarter of the effort. Full benefits, too!

Re:This man lives to his name

[garett_spencley]

"Is this a possible cure for spam where its legal or the laws are inadequate?"

All this does is send an e-mail on your behalf to various organizations asking that you be placed on their internal do-not-call-list. By-law any company in Canada that engages in telemarketing must remove you from their call list when requested.

The ironic part is that the system actually sends out bulk e-mail in order to operate. Whether or not that is "SPAM" is open to interpretation.

Re:This man lives to his name

[hedwards]

The ironic part is that the system actually sends out bulk e-mail in order to operate. Whether or not that is "SPAM" is open to interpretation. That would really depend whether or not the emails were solicited and whether or not they stopped when requested.

Calling somebody should be considered consent so far as one is contacting the individual to opt out or inform them of the mistake. If the system only does that and stops after the notification is made then it isn't spam.

The only tricky part is setting things up so that it isn't ripe for abuse. And ensuring that the system won't continuously churn out emails for requests that have already been completed.

http://www.catalogchoice.org/ is a similar idea applied to catalogs. The site just sends opt outs, and in some cases opt ins when the person wants a new catalog, and they send a request to the business to stop sending more. The basic way that it's set up makes it advantageous for both sides.

You have to give them your address and the name on the mailing, but it's just information which is already publicly available to the company to get the correct mailing stopped.