News Columnists / Mark Bonokoski
Telemarketing nightmare
Foul language, threats of rape after he hangs up on telephone pitchman
By MARK BONOKOSKI
Last Updated: 22nd November 2009, 5:51am
When James Terry hung up on the telemarketer he thought nothing more of it, mainly because he could barely understand a word the man was saying.
If he thought anything at all, he thought of how the do-not-call list he had signed up for through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) had obviously had little or no effect.
Telemarketers were still calling.
And he was still hanging up on them.
"Like thousands of other Canadians hang up on them," he says.
No kidding.
When the do-not-call list first went live back in October 2008, thousands of Canadians were so hoping to put telemarketers on permanent hold that they jammed the government website -- the demand so high that the CRTC had to publish a note on its site advising customers to try later.
By 4 p.m. of the first day, more than 334,000 people had registered online and by phone.
"It's way beyond anything we'd expected," CRTC spokesman Denis Carmel said at the time.
"On the telephone side, more than 1 million people tried to access the system. It's clearly beyond any estimation we had done."
As for the telemarketer who called the Terry household, despite their number being on the do-not-call list, all James Terry remembers is the caller addressing him by name, and then stating that his own name was Solomon.
But his thick Indo-Asian accent made the rest of his monologue indecipherable.
Which is one reason James Terry hung up.
The other reason is because he, like thousands of Canadians, are sick and tired of being interrupted by telemarketers finding their way around the ban.
Heading out the door to run errands with his two young children -- Shannon, who turns 9 on Tuesday and 6-year-old son, Ryan -- the 36-year-old Courtice man, a contract worker at a nearby plastics factory, heard the phone ring again.
But he kept going.
"If that was the telemarketer calling back, I was going to give him an 'A' for persistence," says Terry. "But little did I know."
Due to a brief off-on power outage, a long-forgotten digital telephone voice recorder in an upstairs room had inexplicably come back to life and, shorty thereafter, after returning from work at the local A&P, Terry's wife, Colleen, noticed the red light blinking on the old machine.
And so she pushed the play button.
What she heard made her blood run cold.
She called her husband to come upstairs and James Terry immediately recognized the voice.
It was Solomon the telemarketer.
After calling James Terry a bunch of names, after reaming him out for the hang-up, he then went way over the top -- stating he was going to come to James Terry's house and rape his wife, rape his mother, and rape his daughter.
The f-word was the verb he used.
Repeatedly.
James Terry, livid beyond words, dialed *69 to retrieve the last number that called his house.
The automated voice said it was 905-111-1111.
Terry called it and got nothing.
As soon as he dialled the first "1" in the number, the line coughed out a busy signal.
As a Bell operator later explained, "It is a computer-generated number. It does not actually exist.
"The telemarketer could be anywhere," she said. "In Mississauga or Mumbai. But there is no way of knowing."
Durham Regional Police told Terry there was nothing they could do either and that, unlike on TV, "you can't simply punch in a phone number and come up with a name."
As the cop told Terry, the telemarketer was probably "putting the tips on shoelaces the week before, was as poor as dirt, and having a bad day."
This, of course, did nothing to appease James Terry.
"What if he is in Mississauga and not Mumbai?" asks Terry. "All he has to do is type my number in one of those on-line reverse directories, and he has my address.
"What if he was serious?"
James Terry then did the only thing he could do.
He went on-line and lodged an official complaint on the CRTC's website, supplying all the information he could possibly supply.
"And then I called the CRTC, and talked to a live body," he says. "And I told her the whole story, right down to quoting -- verbatim -- the message the telemarketer had left on my phone, and asking her what she thought of it.
"She was just as appalled as I was, and promised to bring the information to the attention of an investigator.
"And that's the last I heard."
According to Peggy Nebout of the CRTC, the reason James Terry heard nothing back is because no one hears back from the CRTC -- at least not the consumer lodging the complaint.
"There are just too many complaints," says Nabout. "But we will investigate if we have enough information.
"But, when all you have is a number that does not exist, and no name of any company, it's impossible.
"This is not to say the complaint is not valid," she says. "But how can we find them without solid information?
"We do not have a crystal ball."
MARK.BONOKOSKI@SUNMEDIA.CA OR 416-947-2445
telemarketing nightmare
Telemarketing nightmare
Foul language, threats of rape after he hangs up on telephone pitchman
By MARK BONOKOSKI
Last Updated: 22nd November 2009, 5:51am
When James Terry hung up on the telemarketer he thought nothing more of it, mainly because he could barely understand a word the man was saying.
If he thought anything at all, he thought of how the do-not-call list he had signed up for through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) had obviously had little or no effect.
Telemarketers were still calling.
And he was still hanging up on them.
"Like thousands of other Canadians hang up on them," he says.
No kidding.
When the do-not-call list first went live back in October 2008, thousands of Canadians were so hoping to put telemarketers on permanent hold that they jammed the government website -- the demand so high that the CRTC had to publish a note on its site advising customers to try later.
By 4 p.m. of the first day, more than 334,000 people had registered online and by phone.
"It's way beyond anything we'd expected," CRTC spokesman Denis Carmel said at the time.
"On the telephone side, more than 1 million people tried to access the system. It's clearly beyond any estimation we had done."
As for the telemarketer who called the Terry household, despite their number being on the do-not-call list, all James Terry remembers is the caller addressing him by name, and then stating that his own name was Solomon.
But his thick Indo-Asian accent made the rest of his monologue indecipherable.
Which is one reason James Terry hung up.
The other reason is because he, like thousands of Canadians, are sick and tired of being interrupted by telemarketers finding their way around the ban.
Heading out the door to run errands with his two young children -- Shannon, who turns 9 on Tuesday and 6-year-old son, Ryan -- the 36-year-old Courtice man, a contract worker at a nearby plastics factory, heard the phone ring again.
But he kept going.
"If that was the telemarketer calling back, I was going to give him an 'A' for persistence," says Terry. "But little did I know."
Due to a brief off-on power outage, a long-forgotten digital telephone voice recorder in an upstairs room had inexplicably come back to life and, shorty thereafter, after returning from work at the local A&P, Terry's wife, Colleen, noticed the red light blinking on the old machine.
And so she pushed the play button.
What she heard made her blood run cold.
She called her husband to come upstairs and James Terry immediately recognized the voice.
It was Solomon the telemarketer.
After calling James Terry a bunch of names, after reaming him out for the hang-up, he then went way over the top -- stating he was going to come to James Terry's house and rape his wife, rape his mother, and rape his daughter.
The f-word was the verb he used.
Repeatedly.
James Terry, livid beyond words, dialed *69 to retrieve the last number that called his house.
The automated voice said it was 905-111-1111.
Terry called it and got nothing.
As soon as he dialled the first "1" in the number, the line coughed out a busy signal.
As a Bell operator later explained, "It is a computer-generated number. It does not actually exist.
"The telemarketer could be anywhere," she said. "In Mississauga or Mumbai. But there is no way of knowing."
Durham Regional Police told Terry there was nothing they could do either and that, unlike on TV, "you can't simply punch in a phone number and come up with a name."
As the cop told Terry, the telemarketer was probably "putting the tips on shoelaces the week before, was as poor as dirt, and having a bad day."
This, of course, did nothing to appease James Terry.
"What if he is in Mississauga and not Mumbai?" asks Terry. "All he has to do is type my number in one of those on-line reverse directories, and he has my address.
"What if he was serious?"
James Terry then did the only thing he could do.
He went on-line and lodged an official complaint on the CRTC's website, supplying all the information he could possibly supply.
"And then I called the CRTC, and talked to a live body," he says. "And I told her the whole story, right down to quoting -- verbatim -- the message the telemarketer had left on my phone, and asking her what she thought of it.
"She was just as appalled as I was, and promised to bring the information to the attention of an investigator.
"And that's the last I heard."
According to Peggy Nebout of the CRTC, the reason James Terry heard nothing back is because no one hears back from the CRTC -- at least not the consumer lodging the complaint.
"There are just too many complaints," says Nabout. "But we will investigate if we have enough information.
"But, when all you have is a number that does not exist, and no name of any company, it's impossible.
"This is not to say the complaint is not valid," she says. "But how can we find them without solid information?
"We do not have a crystal ball."
MARK.BONOKOSKI@SUNMEDIA.CA OR 416-947-2445
telemarketing nightmare
