The Blog of Harald

(Ok, it’s been around for a long time. Sue me. :)

So after having received yet another telemarketing call about switching my local service away from Bell, I called Bell and asked if there were any checks and balances in place. You know, to prevent fraud. The kind of fraud the US has been dealing with for 25 years.

Short answer: no. They simply trust the other guy, and let them take your service away from Bell. There’s a CRTC mandate that the new company “formally obtain consent”:http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/t1023.htm#n6, but a) that can be in several different easy-to-forge formats, and b) apparently Bell doesn’t bother verifying consent except in disputes.

I’m not sure who the imbeciles are here (I suspect the CRTC, but it *could* be Bell Canada), but there’s one somewhere.

You’d think we’d at least attempt to learn from the mistakes of our neighbours to the south with all of these attempts at deregulation, but no. That would require that intelligence trump greed.

I’m appalled…