I am noticing an increase in the number of calls from “Private Name / Private Number” that disconnect within a couple seconds of me answering the phone. As I write this posting, I was just hung up on again – all three of our lines have received similar calls in a span of 10 minutes.
Yes I have hang-ups. Anyone else experiencing this phenomenon?
I suspect that these calls are coming from a company that wants to leave a message on my voice mail – like Yanish the Mover, or some vacation promoter. I guess live humans aren’t as good a target for these folks as my voice mail box.
What is my point?
Well – it seems to me that these annoyance calls fall through the cracks in the CRTC’s rules for telemarketing. They aren’t “voice mail broadcasting” because that term is defined by the CRTC as:
a telecommunication whereby a recorded message is delivered directly into a person’s voice mailbox without interrupting that person’s activities in real time.
No recording was delivered and even if one was delivered, it did interrupt my activities in real time – so these calls don’t meet the definition of voice mail broadcasts.
It is possible the call should fall under the automatic dialer (ADAD) rules, but how would we find out who is offending? No message is left when a human answers the call.
Even if the call gets traced, there was no solicitation and therefore no telemarketing.
This appears to be yet another way the bad guys will work around the rules, while the good guys get stuck paying.
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CRTC, DNCL, telemarketing