Bell fined $1.3-million for violating do not call rules
IAIN MARLOW
TELECOM REPORTER
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Dec. 20, 2010 4:21PM
Last updated Thursday, Mar. 24, 2011 2:52PM
As the CRTC ratchets up its response to the widely loathed practice of telemarketing, it has hit Bell Canada with a record-setting $1.3-million penalty for calls that violated the National Do Not Call List.
It is the largest penalty the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ever issued for violating its telemarketing regulations. On Friday, it issued a $500,000 penalty to Xentel DM, a telemarketing company that was abusing an exemption granted to charities. The CRTC has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of complaints about these types of calls, which often interrupt dinner conversations with unwanted sales pitches.
“Bell recognized that it was quite a serious series of violations,” said Andrea Rosen, the regulator’s chief enforcement officer for telecommunications.
Bell also donated $266,000 to Concordia University after the regulator raised concerns about automated solicitations – or “robo-calls”– that Bell was sending to its own wireless customers without their consent asking if they wanted to “top up” their prepaid wireless plans.
Bell co-operated with the CRTC during the course of the investigation, acknowledging that its third-party telemarketers had not only violated the regulator’s Do Not Call List, but Bell’s own internal list of Canadians who told the company they did not want to receive any calls.
Colin Rogers, a fourth-year Ryerson University student who studies privacy issues and has conducted fraud investigations for a risk analysis firm, was on the CRTC’s list and Bell’s internal list. Despite that, and two formal complaints to both the CRTC and Bell, he received a intense barrage of dinner-time calls from agents working on behalf of Bell over a six-week period earlier this year.
“I said if the calls keep coming, I’m going to make a complaint. The calls kept coming,” said Mr. Rogers, 28, who lives in Toronto. “Civility became difficult.”
The calls stretched out over several months, but died off toward early summer after he continually demanded to be passed to the callers’ supervisors to complain.
On Monday, Bell said it had terminated contracts with two telemarketing companies and suspended “several others” as a result of the investigation. Like Telus, Bell pledged to stiffen guidelines for telemarketing practices.
Bell fined $1.3-million for violating do not call rules
IAIN MARLOW
TELECOM REPORTER
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Dec. 20, 2010 4:21PM
Last updated Thursday, Mar. 24, 2011 2:52PM
As the CRTC ratchets up its response to the widely loathed practice of telemarketing, it has hit Bell Canada with a record-setting $1.3-million penalty for calls that violated the National Do Not Call List.
It is the largest penalty the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ever issued for violating its telemarketing regulations. On Friday, it issued a $500,000 penalty to Xentel DM, a telemarketing company that was abusing an exemption granted to charities. The CRTC has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of complaints about these types of calls, which often interrupt dinner conversations with unwanted sales pitches.
“Bell recognized that it was quite a serious series of violations,” said Andrea Rosen, the regulator’s chief enforcement officer for telecommunications.
Bell also donated $266,000 to Concordia University after the regulator raised concerns about automated solicitations – or “robo-calls”– that Bell was sending to its own wireless customers without their consent asking if they wanted to “top up” their prepaid wireless plans.
Bell co-operated with the CRTC during the course of the investigation, acknowledging that its third-party telemarketers had not only violated the regulator’s Do Not Call List, but Bell’s own internal list of Canadians who told the company they did not want to receive any calls.
Colin Rogers, a fourth-year Ryerson University student who studies privacy issues and has conducted fraud investigations for a risk analysis firm, was on the CRTC’s list and Bell’s internal list. Despite that, and two formal complaints to both the CRTC and Bell, he received a intense barrage of dinner-time calls from agents working on behalf of Bell over a six-week period earlier this year.
“I said if the calls keep coming, I’m going to make a complaint. The calls kept coming,” said Mr. Rogers, 28, who lives in Toronto. “Civility became difficult.”
The calls stretched out over several months, but died off toward early summer after he continually demanded to be passed to the callers’ supervisors to complain.
On Monday, Bell said it had terminated contracts with two telemarketing companies and suspended “several others” as a result of the investigation. Like Telus, Bell pledged to stiffen guidelines for telemarketing practices.