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CRTC Confirms Do-Not-Call Registry By September 30th

The CRTC has today confirmed that the national do-not-call registry will launch by September 30th.  Given the number of exempt organizations – registered charities, political parties, polling companies, newspapers, businesses with a prior business relationship – Canadians will still need to individually opt-out of hundreds of additional organizations for the phone to stop ringing.  iOptout.ca, which has processed millions of these individual opt-out requests since its launch in the spring, will come out of beta in time for the CRTC launch and will be ready to piggyback the CRTC's DNCL with the possibility of signficant penalties for those organizations who do not respect the opt-out requests.  More on iOptOut's development in the coming weeks.

12 Comments

  1. Will this affect foreign calls? No
    This won’t affect foreign calls at all.

    Is there a provision to allow us to complain about Cdn companies who use Bermuda or Indian call-centres?

  2. So, who *isn’t* exempt?
    Probably 60-70% of the unsolicited/undesired calls I receive are from registered charities, political parties, polling companies, newspapers, businesses with a prior business relationship …

  3. How can you lay a complaint
    About 90% of the calls that I get have dead air at the other end, and THEY hang up without even a machine squawking at me much less a person. How can we lodge a complaint against those calls? (I have intentionally in the past left the line off-hook with the hope that they are paying long distance).

    With the Do Not Call list, for the calls that someone is in fact at the other end, only one or two would be prevented per year based on the number of exemptions.

  4. Hah, Bell
    LOL, as if Bell Canada is in the right situation at the moment to be in charge of such a DNCL for 5 years, with them screwing internet users with throttling, the current/future planned wholesaler screwjobs, wireless customers getting raped on incoming texts, the teachers buyout, the job cuts, and whatever else they plan on doing to this sinking ship.

    To me Bell Canada is the LAST company that should ever be touching such a chore at this given time. To me this just confirms the CRTC will continue to be up Bell’s ass while the rest of us just get screwed over.

  5. DNCL Expiry Provision
    First, Michael, I would like to thank you, so much, for making the “iOptOut” site available, so that the “agencies” that were “missed” by the CRTC National DNCL provisions can be notified as well as the telemarketers.

    I was thoroughly dismayed, however, by the CRTC when I read in their “Telecom Decision CRTC 2007-48” that registrations on the national DNCL list will automatically expire after three years!

    There is already a provision stated to automatically remove a registration when a registered number is taken out of service, or has changed users. This makes perfect sense. However, this three-year-expiry provision was added to “…mitigate the effect of not removing disconnected and re-assigned telecommunications numbers from the National DNCL.”

    Eh? What’s that again? There is already a provision to automaticaly remove a DNCL registration if a number is disconnected or re-assigned, but we also need this three-year expiry to “mitigate” what should already have been taken care of?

    Why didn’t the CRTC, at the very least, allow for registrants to choose whether they wanted their registration to remain permanantly (i.e. until the number is disconnected or re-assigned) or to opt for an automatic expiry after a USER’S chosen amount of time?

    Of course, lobbying businesses had nothing to do with this three-year provision, right? Yeah, right. >:(

  6. Charity worker says:

    confused
    Is an Email to request to be on the DNCL enough?

    I work for an Ottawa based charity and i’m in the process of making lists for their annual calls to all of Ottawa. I have not recieved a single “opt out” from the head office, and our charity is on your “iOptout.ca” web site.

    Other charities I know of will not accept an Email and will accept only a written notice mailed to them.

    So I’m confused about this now. Does the CRTC state the method of communication to be removed? What happens with our ottawa based charity that disn’t get the opt-out sent via Email? Will they be fined?

    Thanks in advace for any info, or links to info.

  7. Disgusted says:

    Telemarketers
    I registered my Business, home and fax number on the Canadian Marketing Association \”Do Not Call\” list last year and the number of BS calls have increased dramitically. I maintain a list on the wall by my phones of numbers to hang up on or delete faxes from. I support a list but scam marketers would follow it. How can you fine someone that uses a phone number like \”111-111-1111\”. Can they be tracked down and fined, hah!.
    Rather than have the CMA\’s list, I\’d like to be able to Opt out of phone calls from some companies and allow other legitimate ones still the opportunity to call.

    Another pet-peeve is “The characters you type must match those in the image shown”, yes I know why this is done, but some times those letters/characters are too small to be clear. This time it’s better.

  8. Chris Brand says:

    Re: confused
    > Other charities I know of will not accept an Email and will accept only a written notice mailed to them.

    Amazing. They really think they’re likely to get donations from people who’ve emailed them to say “don’t call me” ? If that happened to me, I’d make a point of bad-mouthing the charity in question to everyone I know.

  9. Max Power says:

    514-958-0000
    So this is going to stop all those FAX calls that “claim” to be from 514-958-0000 now???

    How about BLOCKED, NO DATA, INCOMPLETE DATA, PRIVATE, PRIVATE PARTY or any other malformed number???

    And when is Call Block going to be fixed to automagically ignore any number that’s not valid in the CNA???

  10. 514-958-0000
    I AGREE with the above post.

    SOMEONE please see that Call Block gets fixed to automatically ignore any number that\’s not valid in the CNA.

    SOMEONE do something about all those 514-958-0000 calls – i get them too, have for years and it needs to STOP!

  11. Tired and Cranky says:

    514-958-0000 Test Code PQ
    Still getting calls from this number in the middle of the night. When the first fax fails, it auto-redials 3X. Why isn’t this illegal??

  12. 514-958-0000
    It’s 2011 and 514-958-0000 has yet to be shut down. Considering that many people received these calls on cell phone plans that charge them for inbound calls, CRTC really should be doing something about telemarketing behind this blind number.