Is federal DO NOT CALL list functioning properly?

Factual Questions
1

This is the site to register for the federal “Do Not Call” list. I attempted to register yesterday, and seemed to be successful, except for a final step involving an email confirmation.

The site instructions said an email would be sent to my address “within a few minutes”, and I was to follow a link in the email to complete the registration. If I do not complete the registration with 72 hours, it will be deleted/canceled.

Here it is nealy 24 hours later, and I haven’t received the email. Late last night, I registered again, thinking I possibly typoed my email address. The site does not make you type your email address twice as a typing validation measure. Anyway, no email from the 2nd registration either.

Has the site worked as advertized for you?

2

The site was swamped yesterday so it may be a while before you get the confirmation.

You can always just to try to sign up later. They aren’t putting the list into effect for a few more months anyway.

3

It took about 10 hours for me to get a reply.

4

It worked for me, email and all. I signed up at 3AM. Later in the day, the site was getting over 100 hits per second, which no doubt had the hamsters sweating pretty good.

5

You could also just go ahead and make the phone call to register, provided you’re making that call from the phone you want listed on the don’t call list. I did that and it took less than a minute.

6

I registered the first night, 3 phone #'s (One landline, 2 cell). The first verification email came right away, none for the other two phone numbers. I went back to the site to check the numbers, and had to re-enter them, then the other two emails came shortly. I had them sent to my Yahoo address, the first one ended up in my bulk mail folder, the other two came into my inbox.

7

Yea, I tried it and had to do it twice to get my confirmations, but it worked.

8

I entered my phone numbers and email address early yesterday, but (as of late this morning) hadn’t gotten either of the promised emails. So I entered my phone numbers again and received my two emails about a half-hour later.

My guess is that things went awry yesterday because of the unexpected load, and my advice would be to enter your phone number(s) again if you haven’t gotten your promised emails within 24 hours.

9

I registered yesterday about 3pm EST and got the email about 3 hours later.

Part of me suspects a conspiracy, and it’s really the telemarketers setting this thing up, and now they have my home, cell, and work numbers!!!

It all just seems too good to be true…

10

well thank Og…I thought they were just picking on me!
I haven’t received my email confirmation either.
Maybe they’re just picking on us! …

I will follow the above advisors wisdoms, and chew food now
instead of fingernails!

11

“getting over 100 hits per second,”

The newspaper today said that at noon they got 1000 per second.

12

They seem to still be having difficulties. I got my e-mail notification in a few hours today, but the links either get an error message or just hang.

13

I have an unlisted number but glad to see the government has finally took a stand against the telemarketers.

Now if the government would take a stand on SPAM and come down hard on all spammers. :smiley:

14

My confirmation emails took about 8 hours to show up, and that’s with entering the request at 11PM Pacific time. The government hamsters were being severly tested - I heard a news report that somewhere over 750,000 requests were processed by 5 PM yesterday.

It’s perfectly legit and telemarketer-free. The .gov is a protected top-level domain owned by the government. Specifically, by the General Services Administration.

15

I never imagined it wasn’t legit. I thought there was a good chance it was broken and useless. I DID receive a confirmation email about 6 PM this evening. I wonder if I’ll get another for the 2nd attempt?

16

Another data point: I tried it several times, a few times using my main NetZero email address, and once using my Hotmail account (the one I keep for stuff where I don’t want me real address to end up on somebody’s list). The Hotmail email came back in about 4 hours, whereas I’ve never gotten the email on NetZero. Clicking on the emailed link worked just fine.

Just a WAG, but I suspect that NetZero’s mail servers may be rejecting the messages, because they will appear to be coming from a mass mailer (I’ve almost never gotten spam of any sort on NetZero, leading me to believe that they do some effective filtering on their end) - I read somewhere that they were having some problems with that, and that the FTC was working with some of the big ISPs to work around the filtering problems.

17

I know it’s an exciting concept, but you don’t have to be in such a hurry. It doesn’t even go into effect until October. The one here in Indiana works just fine. There have been some suits against the law, but the courts smacked 'em into the dirt.

18

I originally posted this in Great Debates because I saw the thread there, but it is actually a factual question I have:

It strikes me as bizzarre that you have to register to opt-out of telemarketing; wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to run a database of everyone who did want to receive telemarketing? Was an idea ever tabled to actually have opt-in instead of opt-out? i.e. the same as reputable email news.

19

In the case of an opt-in database, I believe anyone who thought they wanted telemarketing calls (or at least didn’t not want telemarketing calls) would soon realize they didn’t. Imagine the number of calls you would get. I’d destroy my telephone.

20

What makes it better than a states’ do not call list? California has a do not call list website that’s fast & works fine, so what would be the point of signing up for this one too?