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[TekTalk] Getting a lot of marketing calls....

Hi there

Since signing up to TekTalk... I've been getting a lot of marketing calls/ BS numbers .. at least twice a day on average....

I came over from Rogers Home Phone and it was't this much at all.

Is this due to the number being a VOIP number now??..

I know there it a call reject feature with Tektalk.. I've been using that for all of these numbers so far..

Thanks

Mike

I also switched from Rogers to Tek about 6 months ago. I get very few bs calls and like you use the reject feature. Did you port your number over or did you get a new number. There is one company that was calling here multiple times in a week. Now with there number on the reject list i do not hear it ring.

I ported my number over from Rogers.

I always do a search of numbers I don't recognize and determine to add them to the reject list or not. But still.. I get weird numbers at least twice a day since switching over to Tektalk.

But so far, TekTalk has been working great.

If you ported your number over and didn't get them that much before; someone could have sold your number.

I recently switched from a Bell landline to voip.ms and get no marketing calls whereas I was getting a constant barrage before. Of course, I decided not to port my number of twenty-some years and just get a new number, kind of hitting the reset switch on life. I figure many entities that require your number (banks, the doctor, dentist, vet, deliveries, what have you) are misusing the info. For an extra buck a month, I just bought two telephone numbers: the private and carefully released one that rings in the house and another that I give out that goes directly to voicemail that I may or may not ignore. So far, it's almost like going off grid and home is much quieter.

Some providers have the ability to block known telemarketing numbers..

As someone that had to do telemarketing for a small period in time, I can tell you the best way to get rid of them.

Don't be rude, but firm..

Pick up.. wait for the person to come on.

Stop them right there and then and say: PLEASE TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST, DO NOT CALL MY NUMBER AGAIN.

Wait on the line while they confirm. If you don't, they may just dump you back into the queue.

Once you say this, they are required to put you on a Do not Call list.

Keep in mind this only works for the one call centre that's calling you, but after about a month of telling all the people who call, you will see all calls drop off drastically. I have personally done this, and have found calls drop off to maybe 1 a year.

Actually if you give direct orders to STOP CALLING it falls on the line of harassment, so calls from the US (which is highly unlikely because most comes from overseas). ORDERS to STOP CALLING mean in you have to stop calling. It doesn't matter if they are in Canada or the US. Harassment is a chargeable offence in Canada and the US. Overseas on the otherhand isn't, but if they are selling for a business/product over hear, technically that company could be on the hook. If you are firm, and demand to be taken off the list, and demand that they stop calling, in my experience along with my parents, who I told to do the same thing, we have seen a major drop in calls. I think Canadians are too passive at times. We need to stand up for our rights.. Avoiding the call just makes them call back. It's automated. I can tell you after someone yelled at me as apparently we called them 4 times that day, and I asked. "SIR did you ever answer the phone?" and he said "NO!". My response was that we didn't have control of who the system calls, but if you don't pickup it will keep calling at random. Once he said to stop calling again, I was more than happy to put him on a Do not call list, but all of that could have been avoided. It happens far too much. I agree I hate telemarketers, but sometimes, you have to be proactive a bit as well to stop it.

No, not in all cases koreyb. I received the vast majority of my telespam from US area codes. Unenforceable too.

My wife (who regrettably has POTS service and still gets telespams, unlike my filtered service described here earlier) asked a 905 (Toronto) area code duct-cleaning telespammer to stop calling, oh, about a dozen times the last two months. Over and over again. Firmly. Slowly. Repeatedly. They would not respect that.

The only way I got them to stop calling was for me to answer the phone once, feign some interest, waste their time in asking a lot of questions, "book an appointment" (hilarious because we have hot water heating - no ducts here!) and then make it clear "the appointment" was only so I could talk with the person who would show up, get a clear estimate and understanding of the work from them, and then decide on their service. (and waste their time if they did).

I made the experience miserable *for them* for a change. I wasted their time.

They stopped calling after that. But it was far too much of our time wasted over two months.

It's far better just to set up IVR filtering as I did. Once a telespammer has rung your phone they have *already* interrupted your creative mental task, or your meal, or your sleep.

I'm not saying Do Not Call has some limited effectiveness. It's just that fundamentally it's too late to be fully effective. You've already been interrupted.

Re: [TekTalk] Getting a lot of marketing calls....

Go this website and register your number, hopefully you won't get any call after that. Though, there are some companies that disregard that registration, then you can file a complain from the website.

»www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/index-eng

The Do not call list is useless as they sell that list and the enforcement is weak and not applipable for Indian call centers. It is far easier to block calls using Caller ID screening on VoiP and not list your phone number (by default in voip)

voip.ms filtering can handle wild cards and pattern matching. You can redirect block area codes, or invalid caller ID to the number not in service tone or have it hang up automatically. There don't seem to be an artificial limits on how many can be in the list like POTS.

Now if only there is a real time blackhole list for VoIP that can be used for incoming calls...

to hell with that sort of treatment. In ottawa on friday a radio show on cfra our local chat radio station reported that if you demand to speak with someone in canada they have to transfer you. any idea if that was a true comment ?

Technically if a Canadian company uses an offshore call centre for telemarketing, the CRTC can prosecute the Canadian company.

hard to do ... but possible.

As to speaking to someone in Canada, I don't think there's any legal requirement, but the company may choose to do that.

Yes, but irrelevant. My point to koreyb was that the spammers were outside of Canada and therefore any laws that I could use against their behaviour would be nearly impossible to employ. Even more so for "overseas" than the US.

The only effective solution is to stop them from ringing your phone in the first instance, as I have done.

Most of the call I receive is for duct cleaning on behalf of Canadian company, so it is easy to get the info and file a complaint. If the case is not on behalf of Canadian company the answer is easy "... off, bye..". Just a note: asking DO NOT CALL ME won't work for guys who make 4 dollar a day!