Bob Haase’s Another Can Of Worms

Time to Revamp the No Call List

I think it may be time to revamp the No Call List.  Maybe some people like getting all the unsolicited calls even if they are on the list.  Some of the callers say they have “call blocking” so there is nothing the government can do about it, but I think our government could if they wanted to.   I don’t think the question is having the technology to take care of this but rather they don’t think enough of their constituents are concerned about it. 

One problem is that there are so many groups that are exempt from the No Call List.  Marketing groups that are taking public opinion calls are exempt so they can call and ask you all kinds of questions.  This also includes political groups taking public opinion polls.  Candidates can call and ask for your support and tell you how bad the other candidates are because they are exempt.  Most non-profit groups are also exempt so they can call and ask for contributions. What is left?  Why even have a No Call List?

I think people should have a choice when they sign up for the No Call List to select the groups they want to be exempt from or decide to be exempt from all of them.  If you don’t want to receive political calls you should be able to take your name off the list of people they can call. With the recent Supreme Court ruling that takes away the maximum amount of money a person can donate for political purposes our phones should be ringing all the time and that is probably all we will hear on television. You might wonder how this ruling has any affect on telephone calling, but that gives more money to the PAC’s to hire people to make the political calls. 

Wait until they find a better way of collecting cell phone numbers so that they can call you all the time on your cell.  I know people that dropped their land line not because of cost but because of the nuisance of receiving these calls. Most cell phone numbers are not listed so it becomes difficult to find the numbers of the people you want to call. More people might have their cell numbers listed if they didn’t have to put up with all these unsolicited calls.

I started out in the first paragraph saying that our elected representatives don’t think we are concerned with unsolicited calls so they are not doing anything about this.  If you don’t mind unsolicited calls even if you are on the No Call List, or like all the political calls come campaign time, you might not want to do anything about it.  If it bugs you as much as it does me you might want to call your representatives to let them know you want something done.  I doubt however they will ever do anything about political calls even if their constituents object to them because they have forgotten they are suppose to represent you and are more concerned with their party’s position.  

Bob Haase is the host of “Outdoors Thursday” heard Thursday mornings at 9:10 a.m. on News-Talk 1450 KFIZ.