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`Don't call me' cries fall on deaf ears, Register To Curb Pesky Calls A Miserable FailureBy parul118, Section Telephone
How many times have you received a call that begins, ``A very good morning to you. I'm calling from...'' And you grope for the shortest possible exit line to end the call? It seemed this tele-harassment would end when the telecom regulator promised to end pesky calls by setting up a National Do Not Call (NDNC) register on September 5. But the hopes have been dashed.
Over two months have gone by and 6.7 million phone users have made it plain they DO NOT want to receive pesky tele-marketing calls by registering on NDNC. But to no avail. They continue to get these calls every day, at inconvenient times, creating a sense of despair with the regulator and telecom companies. Readers have often written in to TOI complaining about the `menace'. Some have upbraided us for not being able to sort out this ``simple problem''. We decided to check out the magnitude of the problem by conducting a survey in four metros -- Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata. We also asked the regulator -- Trai -- and some of the telecom companies as to what was the problem in blocking unsolicited calls. First the poll. The unambiguous message from the exclusive poll done by Synovate India for TOI was that the NDNC is a miserable failure. According to the poll, every single person who registered on it in Delhi more than 45 days ago -- the period beyond which the calls were supposed to stop has continued to get such calls, some of them as many as 20 a week. The situation is better in Kolkata, where only 50% of those who registered on NDNC said the pesky calls are continuing. It is only in Mumbai that a majority of this category -- about two-thirds -- said they've stopped getting the unwanted calls. Among those who haven't registered, everyone said they faced this nuisance. Every respondent in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata said he or she received unsolicited calls. It was only in Bangalore that 40% said they had not been harassed in this manner. The poll suggests the problem is most acute in Delhi, with about onethird saying they receive more than 10 such calls a week on average. Mumbaikars were the next most pestered lot followed by Kolkata. Click on "Full Story" for more...
The poll also revealed that the regulator has failed to create adequate awareness about the NDNC. More than one-fourth of the respondents said they had not heard of such a register. This, despite the fact that the poll was confined to four metros and to the top socio-economic category, SEC A. The lack of awareness in the smaller towns or among the lower SEC groups can only be imagined. In fact, even in Bangalore, twothirds said they were unaware of the existence of the NDNC.
Only 25% of even those who were aware of the NDNC had actually registered on it and even that is because 56% of aware Mumbaikars had done so. This may well be an indication that while some people know that such a registry exists, they are not aware of what they need to do to register or how to register. Trai chairman N Misra seemed unfazed by NDNC's obvious failure. He brushed aside any suggestion of public annoyance over the failure of the NDNC system when he told TOI: ``We have received zero complaints.'' This doesn't tally with even what telecom companies say. Airtel, for instance, said it is receiving close to 1,000 calls a day on NDNC, of which around 10% are complaints. Asked why the system isn't working, an Airtel spokesman said, ``A database of all telephone numbers registered by telemarketers is necessary to process complaints. Trai is working on providing this database to telecom operators through their website.'' Vodafone, which has 1.7 million customers on NDNC, says it is fulfilling its relationship with the customer by uploading its subscribers' numbers on the NDNC every 15 days.
The company points towards telemarketers as the problem area. ``Telemarketers are supposed to scrub their calling lists against the NDNC list every 30 days and only then make calls. The slips could be at this end,'' suggested Harit Nagpal, Vodafone's marketing director. An Idea Cellular spokesman echoed similar views. ``The process of educating and registering telemarketers is incomplete,'' he said. There's a better way out of this mess than trying to make the do-not-call registry work -- have a ``call registry'' instead. In other words, the default option should be that telemarketers cannot make unsolicited calls to subscribers. Those who wish to receive calls can register themselves on the call register. Apart from saving customers harassment, this method has another big advantage. Subscribers can be given the option of choosing what kind of telemarketing calls they want -- from those offering loans, or those selling insurance or real estate options. It will give subscribers freedom of choice. And telemarketers, a genuine target audience. Source- TOI, 19-11-07
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