• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Do-Not-Call Registry Still a Year Off As Ottawa Finalizes Telemarketing Rules

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 May 2006, 18:04 CDT

By SANDRA CORDON

OTTAWA (CP) - Tired of rushing to a ringing telephone, only to hear yet another sales pitch?

Well, relief is almost within earshot. Ottawa is developing rules to implement the long-awaited national Do-Not-Call Registry to help consumers avoid telemarketers. Mind you, it will likely be more than a year before all the rules - including fines as high as $15,000 for ignoring the registry - are put in place, according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission.

The regulator now is developing the registry, which has been talked about in Ottawa for more than four years.

"Many Canadians consider telemarketing calls to be an invasion of privacy," Richard French, vice-chairman of telecommunications for the CRTC, said last week as he opened public hearings on rules for the registry.

Federal regulations "should alleviate the potential for nuisance associated with some aspects of unsolicited telemarketing," French added.

The hearings drew a range of businesses that pitch their products over the phone - including the big banks, insurers, credit unions, cable television operators and telephone companies - as well as consumer champions.

The CRTC is looking for a data management firm outside government to manage the registry, although enforcement will likely stay with the regulator.

Fines being considered would range from $1,500 for an individual to $15,000 for a company that pitches a product to a registered don't-call-me consumer or makes calls outside designated hours.

Exemptions will likely be made for charities and businesses calling current customers.

The don't-bug-me registry won't likely do much against outright telemarketing fraud - which claimed nearly double the number of victims in 2005 compared with two years earlier, according to a survey done for the federal Competition Bureau.

The Strategic Counsel poll, conducted in March 2005 and recently made public, found 28 per cent of the 1,000 respondents said they had been victimized at some point in recent years by telemarketers.

This compared with 16 per cent in 2003, said the polling firm, which claims a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The survey also indicated 76 per cent of Canadians believe that marketing fraud by phone, e-mail or regular mail is on the rise.

The do-not-call registry will deal more with nuisances than with criminals.

And that's being welcomed by professional telemarketers, who say the registry will make their job easier by weeding out reluctant or hostile sales prospects.

"Our view has always been that consumer choice with regard to receiving telemarketing is positive and it's . . . just good business to contact consumers in the way they want to be contacted," said Wally Hill, spokesman for the Canadian Marketing Association.

The official registry will have a much wider range than the 800 corporate members of the CMA's voluntary registry which has operated for about a decade.

Based on dramatic uptake of the do-not-call option in the United States, as many as 10 million Canadians could sign up for the new registry, predicted Hill.

As many as 100 million household phone numbers are on the American registry.

And it seems to have teeth - in a decision last year, a satellite television company was ordered to pay $5.3 million US to settle charges that its telemarketers called households listed on the do-not-call registry.

Canada's registry has been in the works since 2001, but a Liberal bill that finally established it was passed in November 2005 - just before the former government fell.

Source: Canadian Press

More News in this Category