Sometimes your neighbors suck too…..

I received a SPAM fax last month. A completely illegal fax advertising mortgages for a company somewhere in the US. On the fax were two numbers. A toll free number to call about the loans, and a toll free number to remove yourself from getting any more faxes from this company.

I called the remove number, and a VERY grating woman’s voice came on and said, ‘Enter the fax number you want removed.’ No please, not asked nicely, a very annoyed woman’s voice. So I entered my number, and as I hit the last key, the same woman’s voice said ‘Your number has been removed.’ CLICK How rude, but hopefully it did the trick.

Just for grins, I called again and entered a random phone number. The voice said, ‘Your number was not found.’ CLICK Rude again, no chance to enter the number again, but it appears that they actually check to see if the number is in their database, so maybe they really remove it. So, no more SPAM faxes from that company, right?

Well, obviously, my stupid bit was set that morning, because I should have seen this coming. The next week, I received 5 new SPAM faxes. They were all from different companies, and they all had an 800 number for the product, and each had a different 800 ‘remove’ number at the bottom. So I called one. Imagine my surprise to hear the same annoying woman’s voice with the same rude remove message.

DAMN! I see what happened here as I kicked my self in the ass for not seeing it before I called. I put in my number, they remove me from the list for THAT company, but now they know a real fax number, and I get added to EVERY other list they have, so I get even more faxes. Obviously similar to the remove on a SPAM email, I just confirmed my fax number was real to a company that sends SPAM faxes. Oh crap!

But wait, sending unsolicited or advertising faxes is illegal in the US, so I should be able to stop it, right? But how? Well, I decided to call one of the other 800 numbers, this one for a company that sells Nextel phones. I got some phone service, a clerk at a call center who wanted info and said someone would call me. I insisted on speaking with a supervisor, and then that person boss as well, threatening to sue the call center company if someone did not give me the phone number of someone from the fax company. After a lot of arguing and threats, I finally got them to give me the phone number of the fax company, and gave it a call.

Again I got a call center, and again I asked to speak to a supervisor, and again that person was clueless. I finally, again, threatened to take the whole matter to the FCC, the attorney general, and anybody else I could outrage over what was now about 18 junk faxes in just three weeks to my machine. I finally got someone who would talk to me, and I was not pleased. Seems that this company is in Ontario, Canada, and the woman who I spoke with basically said that the US law does not apply to them ”¦because we are in Canada, so too bad, but we do not have to do anything!”

So, what is happening here? Yes, it is illegal in the US to send unsolicited faxes. However, it appears it is not illegal for a US company to hire a Canadian company to send illegal, unsolicited faxes for them to the US, and because the sending company is in Canada, the US laws do not apply. So basically, a US company sends illegal faxes to US citizens, but gets around the law because they have a Canadian do it for them. That sucks.

Well, as you can imagine, this did not sit well with me either. And no amount of demanding that my number be removed from all databases was going to get me anywhere (the woman suggested I continue to call the 800 number to be removed.) And I could not block the number on my fax machine, it was always different, and I asked the phone company if I could block all Ontario calls, and was told no as well.

So I called the FCC and had a little talk with a regulator. Then I called my Congressperson and had a little talk (with an aid) about it there as well. I also called the attorney general’s office, and wrote letters as well. Basically, I called every lawmaker’s office I could think of, The Better Business Bureau of Ontaario, and I wrote a lot of letters too. Several of them asked for copies of all the faxes I received (which I kept) and said they would look into this.

Well, something must have happened because for the most part, the faxes have stopped. I do not know why for sure. A few still trickle in on occasion, I DO NOT call the remove number anymore, but the 5 to 7 per week has gone away. But for me, there is a bigger issue here.

The Canadian government is WELL aware of the no unsolicited fax law. And I believe they have a similar law as well. But in both the US and Canadian law, it seems it only applies to faxes that start and end in the same country! If a Canadian company sends them to the US, that is OK. But why? I thought we were supposed to be good neighbors. Why not include in this law the sending of unsolicited faxes ANYWHERE?

I believe it is intentional actually. In the days of prohibition, it was illegal to produce alcohol in the US. Turns out, it was also illegal in Canada at the same time. Well, it was illegal to produce alcohol in Canada for consumption in Canada anyway. It was NOT, however, illegal to produce it in Canada and export it to other countries, EVEN if those other countries had their own prohibition laws in place. So guess what businesses the Canadians got into? Yep, producing alcohol to send to the US for consumption because we could not make it ourselves, and we would pay lots of money for it. Of course, it was still illegal to import it here, but we had PLENTY of help from our neighbors to the north to get it where it needed to go, because, after all, they could sell so much of it here in the underground. So then it was alcohol, today it is junk faxes. I guess were not such good neighbors after all, especially when the dollar is involved. I can’t help but wonder what illegal things our own government sends to Canada that they cannot get locally?

SIGH!