Thanks, RB. When I read the snopes.com, I was a bit concerned.
I have cut & pasted the link from the Chicago Tribune about "donotcall". And I normally DO always use snopes.com to look up what people send me. Hmm... all too interesting. Well, I registered anyways--so, each can do what they like. Just because the article is in the Tribune, does not mean it is gospel or well researched, I suppose.
Again--thanks for the info!
Editorial
Do not call. We mean it.
September 27, 2007
Like ants at a 4th of July picnic, telemarketers are on the march. The first telephone numbers listed on the federal Do Not Call registry will start expiring next year, unleashing armies of pesky varmints who have waited five long years for the chance to interrupt your dinner.
This is good news if your house needs new vinyl siding and you don't know where to turn. Sit still, and it will come to you. The rest of us must steel against the invasion by re-enrolling at
http://www.donotcall.gov or by calling 888-382-1222. A spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission, which maintains the list, says this is simply a housekeeping measure, sort of like cleaning out your address book every year. (As if anyone does that.)
Those of us who are still having trouble figuring out how to renew our Chicago Cards were understandably outraged at this latest nuisance. More than 149 million people have signed up for Do Not Call, and God knows we had our reasons. We don't know anyone who misses hearing from the telemarketers, but it's easy enough to remove your name from the registry if you want.
Why should the rest of us have to re-enroll? What part of "do not call" is so hard to understand? Grrrrrrr. So we logged on, indignantly, fully prepared to watch our screen freeze as the FTC's Web site failed under the weight of millions of simultaneous renewals and ... oops, that was easy. We're good till 2012. Never mind.
So thanks anyway, U.S. Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), for your courageous efforts to pass a law making the Do Not Call listings permanent. We can handle this one. If you have time to attack life's maddening repeat inconveniences, though, maybe you could write a law to stop the magazine publishers from tricking us into renewing 20 years into the future. The only people who really know when their subscriptions are supposed to expire are the ones who purge their address books annually; everyone else just keeps writing checks.
Keeping track of your Do Not Call status, though, is about as hard as remembering when to replace the outdated milk in your refrigerator. If you forget, you'll know it fast.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/servic...sday/chi-0927e
dit3sep27,0,3397757.story
Visit chicagotribune.com at
http://www.chicagotribune.com