A refrain I’ve been hearing lately from people is that they have been getting a lot of unwanted phone calls from solicitors. The government created the federal Do Not Call registry and it seems to have done absolutely nothing. I myself wasn’t one of the people who rushed out to add my number to the registry and apparently it really doesn’t matter if I do. People I’ve talked to recently who have put their name on it still get calls regardless. The part that pisses me off the most about the whole registry is that they removed the exemption cell phones used to have. Now I get random phone calls on my cell phone during the day at work. I have hardly given my cell number to anyone and have only had it since September.

This is the reason I brought this topic up. Last Friday I received a phone call from a California area code during the middle of the day. Not recognizing either the number or the area code I didn’t take the call. I get a message a minute later saying there was now a voicemail. Thinking this was odd I used my exorbitantly costly daytime minutes to check the message. Turns out its just a high pitch squeal for about 5 seconds, then nothing. I’m on pay as you go, so I decided to check out my transaction record through Rogers and found they charged me a message delivery fee for the voicemail of $6.50, plus the cost of my voicemail call. I was fuming over that. I’m sure many people who have pay by the minute or pay as you go accounts will be mightily pissed if this type of garbage is getting billed to their accounts.

I think after this I’m installing MCleaner on my phone so I can block numbers from out of area code from even getting to my voicemail. To all telemarketers, I assure you I don’t need an extended warranty for my car, a wowee zowee introductory credit card offer or a subscription to the Toronto Star.