Do-Not-Call-List violators identified
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- The CRTC has been going blue trying to keep secret the identities of two telemarketeers whose owners had knowingly violated Canada’s national do-not-call list.
Now they’ve been named as Rob Sugar and Peerless Mason Ltd — and by the CRTC itself.
And Peerless has two dishonourable mentions.
The subject of a petition to have it disbanded, CRTC is short for Canadian Radio-Television & Telecommunications Commission.
Its do-not-call list, designed to free Canadians from the frustration of having to suffer through repeated and unwanted telephone sales calls, is a complete farce.
The CRTC had already refused to identify the two caught violating the list.
“It wouldn`t say who they were, how they were nabbed, what penalties were imposed, or anything else,” said p2pnet, going on according to DNCL boss Len Katz, the intent is not to drive telemarketers out of business or have them change their names, but to get them to abide by the rules.
Oh.
A third transgressor (Peerless, again) was found and the CRTC decided it needed to mull things over in a secret panel, naming Timothy Denton, Louise Poirier and Michel Arpin (the CRTC`s vice-chairman of broadcasting) as the mullers.
However, we find The CRTC fines three telemarketers in its What’s New web page where under ‘Telecom decisions’ we see »»»
- 2009-522 Violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules – Administrative monetary penalties on Rob Sugar File number: 8665-C12-200601626 —- In this decision, the Commission imposes administrative monetary penalties totalling $4,000 on Rob Sugar for fax telemarketing telecommunications initiated on his behalf to consumers whose telecommunications numbers were registered on the National Do Not Call List, in violation of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules.
And »»»
- 2009-523 Violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules – Administrative monetary penalties on Roofing by Peerless Mason Ltd. File number: 8665-C12-200601626 —- In this decision, the Commission imposes administrative monetary penalties totalling $10,000 on Roofing by Peerless Mason Ltd. for initiating five fax telemarketing telecommunications to consumers whose telecommunications numbers were registered on the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) and for initiating the telecommunications without being a registered subscriber or having paid all applicable subscription fees to the National DNCL operator, in violation of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules.
- 2009-524 Violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules – Administrative monetary penalties on Waterproofing by Peerless Mason Inc. File number: 8665-C12-200601626 —- In this decision, the Commission imposes administrative monetary penalties totalling $10,000 on Waterproofing by Peerless Mason Inc. for initiating five fax telemarketing telecommunications to consumers whose telecommunications numbers were registered on the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) and for initiating the telecommunications without being a registered subscriber or having paid all applicable subscription fees to the National DNCL operator, in violation of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules.
Now you know.
UPDATE: In a press release, “The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today found that three telemarketers have violated the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) Rules,” says the CRTC, adding:
“The telemarketers now have 30 days to pay their fines. After 30 days, if the fine is not paid, interest will begin accruing and the CRTC will register the debt with the Federal Court in order to collect the amounts owing. All money collected will be deposited to the Government of Canada`s Consolidated Revenue Fund.”
Stay tuned.
(Cheers, Marc)
caught violating the list – `Name Do Not Call violators`, July 13, 2009
p2pnet – CRTC secret `do-not-call list` talks, August 25, 2009
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August 26th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
if I read correctly, $4K $10K fine? LOL ? LOOOL? RUFKM? ONLY 10k??? A fine for this CRIME should be millions of dollars. Is pure customer abuse….
If it was some lonely citizen to break a stupid law… would go straight to jail…
August 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Maybe there should be a 3-strikes law against these violating businesses.
3 strikes and you lose all telecommunication services.
Pull a France on them.
Of course they would only impose this on the people and not against themselves.
August 26th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
CRTC states that fines are based on number of complaints received, so not many people may have complained about these companies… They also say that they have another 700 companies in the queue, so when/if we see larger more annoying companies we’ll see if we see larger fines….
August 26th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I’m guessing what might have influenced the penalty amounts would be that these are probably small businesses that wouldn’t be able to pay fines larger than that (particularly if there’s a deadline of 30 days).
If that’s the case, then maybe $4,000 is nothing to sneeze at for the one, and I wouldn’t say $20,000 (2 x $10,000) is exactly affordable for most small to medium-sized companies.
As long as SOME FINE was charged, I suppose we should be happy with that.
However, we still have this matter of a few thousand more complaints that have fallen into dev/null. (!?)
August 26th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
No. We may not see others.
The CRTC process works like this:
1. Complaint mechanism
2. investigation
3. Order against said company made and a fine attributed to said company
4. (this is the meat and potato’s): IF the company pays the fine imposed by the CRTC, their name does not become public. So basically you can pay off the CRTC to buy silence.
5. option to fight and lose (as Peerless did)
6. option to do nothing and be fined and lose (as Suagr did)
7. Fight and win. NO mention of your name.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The accumulation of signatures on the petition (DissolveTheCRTC.ca) has slowed down quite a bit, but it’s on its way to 6,000.
Speaks volumes.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Yeah the signatures stagnated the past 2 days.
The last bunch of signatures will be pressing to get by the end of the weekend.
Need a way to boost awareness…
August 27th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Hmmm….
According to the CBC, Rob Sugar is a “weight loss coach”.
Probably not a rich man…however…
Apparently, various callers asking him to stop his fax campaign were ridiculed by either Rob or his staff.
One caller said she was called something like a “classic fax whiner”.
In that light, maybe $4,000 wasn’t enough to give this guy a clue.
He obviously had no regard for the DNCL, and this fine will probably be settled with a credit card.
Also from the same CBC report, Peerless Mason was costing lots of small businesses paper and ink for their fax machines (or thermal paper), and countless calls, e-mails and faxes to this company to be removed from their faxing list were totally ignored.
Though the 2 fines they accumulated totalled $20,000, that sum may also be ineffective, as this company is obviously clueless as well.
September 7th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
I think $4000 is not enough for Mr.Sugar my requests to have his faxes stop were ignored time and time again. I really felt there was no one out there to help me. I understand from the media reports that he had 336 complaints and he wasn’t aware there was a problem? Come on! What makes him think that he is exempt from the rules. His excuse was that he was not aware that he had to maintain a list?? Passing the buck and not taking responsibilty makes me wonder how he runs his business. I guess it is not a suprised that both of these companies have a bad rating with the BBB. Thank God for the BBB! Mr.Sugar goes on about Good Karma- looks like it has come back to bite him.
June 16th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Do a follow article to see if the fine was actually paid. He is continually flooding our machine with faxes up to and including today. When does this guy get stopped??????