Canada’s National Do Not Call List was considered by many to be a complete waste of time when it launched last month because there were too many exemptions for the list. For example, newspapers, pollsters and political parties can continue to conduct telemarketing. Add to this the companies that you do business with (and their affiliates) and we’ve got about 80% of the existing telemarketers covered.
Yesterday, the CRTC announced in a news release that they are considering adding another exemption to the list, electoral candidates that are not yet affiliated with a political party. I’m not sure why there are so many exceptions to a National “DO NOT CALL” List, but if I were to hazard a guess it would be the fact that during the last Federal Election we had the lowest voter turn out in recent history.
If thats the case, we may as well add a few more exceptions to the list. Lets add financial institutions on to the list! With the financial crisis and slowing economy, we may need to give banks the ability to cold call people and convince them to open up some new savings accounts so they can raise more money to lend out. In fact, lets allow all retailers to use telemarketing because if consumers spend more money that will help the economy too!
The only good news is that the CRTC is thinking of scrapping the three year limit for phone numbers on the list. Currently after three years you’ll have to re-register your phone number onto the list but a proposal is out there that will make registrations permanent. To make this possible, phone numbers that are disconnected or reassigned will automatically be removed from the list.
In this weekly segment, we cover the top discussions going on in the automotive forums. These threads may be the most recent hot topics, or epic threads that we just wanted to dig up and feature.
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The Official How Are You Saving Money Thread
The economy is going down the drain, and the sky is falling. Banks are dropping like flies and the TSX has dropped below 11,000 points for the first time in a couple years. What are you doing as the economy slows down? Are you putting more money away into a savings account? Do you have a rainy day fund? Have you changed your spending habits? Sold that new BMW? Share what you’ve done to save money!
National Do Not Call List Registration / Complaint Website Launched
The Canadian National Do Not Call List was officially launched this week. About 75 - 80% of Canadians are expected to register their numbers for inclusion on the list and if the traffic volumes to the website on the first day were any indication, that number looks to be about right. For most of the day the website could not handle the amount of traffic hitting it, but eventually it became functional again and I was able to register all my numbers. Unfortunately, the list does have too many exceptions by allowing charities, political parties, newspapers, companies you’ve done business with and companies you’ve given written permission allowing them to do so will still be able to call you.
The Other Debate… yeah, the Canadian Leaders Debate
Most televisions (even Canadian) were tuned into the VP debate on most US networks when the English Canadian Leaders Debate was televised. I’ll admit, the US election is far more interesting than the Canadian one. So here I am doing my part to draw attention to the election here in Canada by devoting one of the weekly threads to the Canadian Leader Debate.
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