My assistant forwarded this to me today, well he actually forwarded to SPAM. And yes, we have a distribution group called SPAM in our office for this type of purpose.
For those of you who are aware, Canada will soon (or already does) have an official Do-Not-Call registry, whereby you can register your phone number and telemarketers are not allowed to make unsolicited calls to you anymore. There's a catch with our version of the Do-Not-Call registry, and that's that many companies are exempt from it. Lots of telemarketing companies, charities, etc are all legally allowed to make cold-calls to you even if you register with the Do-Not-Call list, simply because they lobbied hard when the law was up for discussion.
Now we have a solution...
Dr. Michael Geist (yes, THE Michael Geist) has come up with a website (http://ioptout.ca) that allows you to sign up with your name, phone number, and email address and then lets you pick which companies to opt out from. When you're finished, you submit your info and the site generates an email for each company stating your info and the fact that you'd like to be removed from their cold-call list. This is the ultimate Do-Not-Call registry because companies that are exempt from the usual law are still required to remove you from their lists if you specifically ask. Now you don't even have to ask, the website does all the work.
I had my home phone number changed three years ago because of the spam calls. I wish and hope this would work out and finally stop these annoying, sometimes rude, calls. But meanwhile, I a bit doubt if it would. Remember the unsubscribe or remove me from the list link in the spam emails? Did it ever work if you went and asked to get your name off the list? It had welcome more spam if you did it. Will it happen the same if we provide our info to them and beg them for not calling? Always think twice every time when handing out your personal information.