The Do Not Call list does not work

The DNC is just a list.  A list of people who do not want to be called by telemarketers.  Not a machine that automatically smashes them when your number is dialed.   It was designed so that you could register and legitimate businesses could and would check the list for people who wished not to be contactacted by legitimate business callers.  To expect the criminals to observe the list and not call is like expecting bank robbers to not rob banks with a No Robbing Sign on the door.   One has to use a little common sense  
in understanding that most all of the posts here are complaining about the scammers and those who criminally use your telephone to trick you out of your money regardless of the DNC.  They are going to continue calling you tomorrow and the next day whether the DNC exists or not. However,  look at all of the post and see how many complain because walmart or radioshack has called trying to sell them something over the phone.  They all complain about  thieves,  bottom feeders,  scumbags, etc.
No list in the world is going to give anyone the total immunity that people think they will get with the DNC registry.  Look at all of the Companies who could legitimately dial your number and telemarket you if your name was not on the list,  and yet the thousands who could...do not....
As far as increasing the unwanted calls,  not on my phone it hasn't.  All I get are those thieves,  scammers,  huxters,  and Rachel that we talk about in these posts.

Really? You mean it's working? Try telling that to the thousands (millions?) who continue to be badgered by telemarketers. We're on the DNC and we continue to be harassed by them (4-5 a day and increasing). Just because it is a US law doesn't stop the more aggressive companies, and even class action lawsuits have not stopped them, because the law does not impose sufficiently stiff penalties, so it's only effective against the telemarketers who do not have deep enough pockets to pay the fines and keep on dialing.

So, no, the law does not do what it's intended to do. It's intended to stop all calls, and it does not. Your recommendation to remove oneself from the DNC in order to judge its value is irrational; many of us who are on it are being punished enough for its inadequacy, thank you very much.

It's working in that when you hear your phone ring and CID doesn't say it's someone you know, you can be almost 100% positive that it is some kind of a scam and I'm including appt setters, nonprofit, political and surveys in that.  If those had a non-scammy bone in their body they would honor the DNC list even though they don't have to.  I will never deal with any entity that calls me on the phone unsolicited.  The people who do are the ones that are keeping them in business.  
The only solution to this is going to have to be technical.

I agree!
You must report all the unwanted calls to the DNCL
It does reduce the number of unwanted calls.
File a complaint.

} the law does not do what it's intended to do. It's intended to stop all calls

Really, now. I would take a half page to correct this assertion, but I'll let the feds do it in a few sentences:

"The National Do Not Call Registry gives you a choice about whether to receive telemarketing calls at home."

That's from the DoNotCall.gov home page. In two places onsite the reader is invited to read a Q&A page from the FTC which explains:

"The registry was created to offer consumers a choice regarding telemarketing calls." ....
"Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most telemarketing calls, but not all."

This is the link. See items 28 through 32.
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt107.shtm

Do you see a pattern here yet? The operative word is "telemarketers". The DNC list is a tool for enforcing the Telemarketing Sales Rule. Callers which don't sell anything are exempt. Neither the registry nor the TSR are "intended to stop all calls". No federal agency promised you a magical shield which repels every phone call that you personally do not want. NONE OF THIS WAS KEPT A SECRET when you registered.

Still this tiresome thread is bulging with hissy fits from people who are clearly overburdened by the prospect of spending a few minutes to understand just what they are signing on to. I have argued for years that this same negligence is precisely the behavior which *attracts* junky callers in the first place.

What Tom and NotGiven and Not Michael and a precious few other thoughtful persons have said in this thread needs to be considered carefully. In my house the DNC registry did wonders when both its phone lines were registered in 2004. A torrent of annoying calls each week suddenly reduced to a trickle. Life with the phones remained relatively peaceful for the rest of the decade. Then conditions changed, and weird promotional calls began coming from untraceable locales.

Cheap VOIP service and Caller ID spoofing were not available as tools of concealment to phone scammers when the DNC program was established. What we're enduring now from "Rachel" and "Heather" and "Tom" and "Officer Villiam Jones-son from the Criminal Hot Check Investigation Bureau" was inevitable the moment the risk of their legal exposure was lowered to the ground. This problem should not have been a great surprise, either. We first saw the same drama play out in the realm of email spammers over the past decade.

The FTC is well aware of their laws being outpaced, and will be inviting ideas for a technological defense to be aired at the Autumn summit announced in July.

Agency Announces Robocall Summit to be Held October 18 in Washington, DC
http://ftc.gov/opa/2012/07/robocall.shtm

The nuisance call problem cannot be strictly controlled by law, or government, or technology alone but through savvy use of all three *as part of a strategy* which is subject to change over time. The other critical factor lies in your own behavior.

What most angry junk call recipients seem to have missed is that we long ago entered an ''Information Economy''. This means that your personal data are practically the same as currency. If you don't guard them like your wallet and your bank account, you will lose them to every scammer and huckster with an autodialer. This also means that the job of protecting your data starts with YOU, and in the current regulatory environment, often ends with you.

Back at my house, one of its phone lines was managed by my late mother, who was an incurable 'armchair philanthropist' and mail order shopper. She had "courtesy cards" for every supermarket and pharmacy in town. There were a couple of credit cards, infrequently used. Almost everything from groceries to insurance was paid with paper checks bearing full address, phone number, and drivers' license. There is no telling how many forms were filled with those same data and more, nor how many times those data have been traded and sold.

The other phone number has been revealed to others on a strict "need to know" basis, which is to say hardly at all. Auction sellers, counter clerks, and charity can shakers can beg all they like but they aren't getting this number. Take one guess which phone number has been pounded each week by barely legal commercial fundraisers, credit reprice scammers, alarm system hawkers, fake pollsters, so on and more. Guess which one can go for weeks and months without a peep from anyone uninvited or illegitimate.

At the moment my poor Dad isn't pelted by any more charity beggars since I politely rubbed their faces in federal law. Heavily regulated and scrutinized callers which file corporate tax returns care about TSR compliance because it makes good sense to their accountants. (The fact that an obscene amount of profit is made in the name of dubious "nonprofit" groups by veiling the activity in a DNC exemption is fodder for a whole other essay.) We don't have such easy solutions for the outright scammers and South Asian fraud factories. The damage has been done, the horse has bolted; our best chance to limit the misuse of a household phone was wasted decades ago.

It's going to be a long, long repair job. You won't find me bawling about "da gubmint" and trashing the sitting administration while waiting for someone else to swoop to the rescue. You will never hear me whining that my blocking gadget is maxed out or my carrier charges fees to filter my traffic. There is no one-stop shopping for this problem, and no other person takes a greater interest in controlling junk call traffic to a given number than that number's keeper.

You also don't see me joining the dozens of impatient, bratty commentors who have dumped all over the lead reply in this thread from 27 months ago. I estimate that Lamet left this site for good well over a year ago, probably in disgust and exhaustion from the ceaseless supply of ignorant remarks. The guy had a sandpaper touch to be sure, but his running theme was correct. Government works best when it facilitates, not dictates. A democracy works best when everyone in it contributes a little care and feeding. For the kind of junk call control some of you are unwittingly asking for, we would need a total surveillance state and an army of federal employees sifting every word you speak over a distance communication device. Because we live in a country which at least purports to care about your rights, the tradeoff is that you accept your role in both preventing and solving your own problems.

The Do Not Call Registry does not work. I get daily 5-8 calls from telemarketers.

Please read Resident 47's post, immediately above yours.

This post should be required reading for every new poster to this site (and some of the old ones).

lol

For those of you who are bugged by the polls, and survey , even sales calls..............................
If you have a cell phone that they're calling or even a land line (some phones allow you to assign ringtones to different callers) 90% of the cell phones do and you can by home phones that do too but you really have to search.  I've made it a habit not to answer calls that I don't know the number. If it's someone one really important  or family they will leave a message, if they don't most likely you didn't want that call anyway. But I always check the number by just putting it in the Address line and searching. if it comes up 800notes  I know it's usually crap but I do check what is said about it. There are other times that it will come up  telling you that it's a survey or what as a lot of them are no longer using the 800/900 numbers. When I figure out who it was I save it in my phone book and set the assigned ring tone as "No Ring"  most phones that you can do that have a no ring, but my current one didn't and it was easy to make one, in fact the phone told me how. Yep a Smart Phone! LOL  My home phone has the same thing, so I put that number in all of them and the phone lights up but never rings, just in case I give the caller a name DNA.....don not answer or Survey ect. I found on my cell I can get 6 numbers listed under 1 DNA! At Election time this feature us heaven sent! Also when you get one for like AT&T and they call everyday or several times a day!  After I feel about 3 months have passed I delete the oldest ones.  Sites like this 800notes are really great, everyone else wants to charge you. But if you put in a number and it's a business it most likely will come up telling you what company it is.

no kidding. All the caller ID stuff is spoofed. These calls are just "voice spam" but much more interruptive

thanks to these cos we cannot call people any more or email them. I guess next we can have text spam

here is what your govt is doing for you. they are having a summit!!!

http://www.usatoday.com/money/business/story/ ... sing/57789350/1

I just installed a DIGITONE  Call Block it is awsome . No calls at 8:00AM Saturday morning . It stops all calls you do not want to hear ring and ring and ring. And it can be programed coustom to your needs.

Tried that, no effect.  In fact, I was told by the nice person at the PA attorney general's office to give up and just hang up on them.

People who are getting scam calls at work should request your managers to utilize call blocking technology, hardware or software. If your phone providers can't block enough numbers, I'd suggest you get a call blocker that can block unlimited calls and even entire area codes. That way you can go on doing your work without getting interrupted by cowards.

You tell them and tell them and tell them and TELL THEM and they don't -- at least Card Services doesn't.