Do Telemarketers Annoy You?

I hate answering the phone and usually leave it for the answering machine to pick up. You just think I have a crazily busy life and that I’m never home, but actually I’m sitting right here in my kitchen, blogging… listening to you leave me a message. Most of my family knows I’ll pick up if they ask me to!

So, I’m not bothered by the telemarketers, but for those of you who cannot resist answering a ringing phone only to find someone on the other end trying to give you a FREE holiday in Mexico – or another credit card – I have GREAT news. You may register your phone numbers on the new Canadian National Do Not Call List!

Apparently the brand new system crashed yesterday when it opened, due to call volume. I don’t get it why anyone would pick up the phone to call when they can go online to register? And, I find it rather ironic to have to put your number ON a list to be taken OFF the telemarketers list. But, then that’s just me!

I went online to register our numbers and it was a simple 3 step process. The only tiny glitch I found was that I had to enter the ‘captcha’ twice – you must use capital letters if they show capital letters… Once I realized my mistake I whizzed through the process and added all the ‘family’ phone numbers.

‘Pop’ will be sooooooooo relieved to not receive those annoying calls. Can you imagine a 95 year old with a slight hearing problem trying to understand a 20 something year old with a heavy foreign accent, reading a script, jabbering away so fast it’s impossible to understand most of the words spewing into your ear? It doesn’t matter how many times I suggest Pop ask them to remove his name from their list – he just hangs up shaking his head, saying he always ‘hangs up on them’ – as though that’ll fix em!

The DNCL doesn’t include political parties, charities and business with whom you do business, but once you register your number the system will take a month or so to go into effect and you should not receive the telemarketing calls.

Not that they bother me because I’m just sitting here blogging, ignoring the phone anyway!

How about you? Have you registered yet? I believe the US has had a DNCL in effect for a couple of years now, and us Canadians are finally jumping on this great idea.