(Information updated March 2 2020)
Marketing companies and telephone sellers love to call us at all times of the day, and sometimes they don't seem to understand that the ones at the receiving end (us) just don’t appreciate it as much as they do… Sound familiar?
Well don’t worry, your troubles are all over! Or, at least they will be 5 minutes from now, if you follow our instructions at the end of the article. You see, in Norway you can register at a public registration site to avoid sellers calling you. If your number is registered on this site, it is then illegal for companies to call you. Not all of the companies have the very best routines to update their “do not call these telephone numbers” database, but you will hopefully avoid calls if you register here.
(Note that if you wish to remove your name and number from sites such as 1881.no this must be done through your phone provider).
The registery site is called “Brønneøysund-registeret”, meaning “the registery of Brønnøysund”. It takes this name because the administration's centre is located in the city of Brønnøysund (North-Norway). And why is this register administration not located in Oslo, you say? Because yes, it is very big, so Oslo would sure be the logical place to have it.
Well, let us tell you something about Norwegian politics regarding districts and economy. In Norway it is a willed and deliberate politic to try and make people live all over the country, not only in the bigger cities. But this is not always too easy to make people do, especially if the smaller towns don’t really have any financial foundation to live on any more. Say for example towns that earlier were small fishing or factory towns, but due to outsourcing and restructuration now have lost their function. These towns we don’t wish to just disappear; rather we like to give them economic subsidies or some sort of new economical foundation to build on. And the Brønnøysund registration administration is a good example of this. By having the administration in the town of Brønnysund, this town now gets a lot of people with state secured incomes that “keeps the economic wheels” of Brønnøysund going. The people of the administration need food and clothes and hairdressers and plumbers and all these kind of services, and all this together makes a city/town (city by Norwegian size-standards) go around.
Anyway ... How to register to not get telephone calls from marketing and telephone sellers:
1: Go to this address: http://www.brreg.no/
2: Keep the site in Norwegian !
3: On the main page click "Rigistrere" (register)
4: Next page click the third option (with the phone crossed out) "Reservasjon"
5: You will then sign-in with your BankID
6: After this you will find the page with the heading: "Reservasjon mot telefonsalg og adressert reklame" (Restriction against telephone sales and addressed advertising) Below you can see some checkboxes, use these if you don't want to be contacted:
gjennom telefon og mobiltelefon (through telephone and mobile)
gjennom posten (through the mail)
7: Under the heading Frivillige organisasjoner You can also choose if you want to be contacted by charity organisations or not.
8: Insert you telephone number, and click "Legg til" (add to) if you have several phone numbers, you can fill out all of them, but remember to click “Legg til” for each new number, you can only add 1 number at the time.
9: Insert you address (if necessary) and click "Legg til"
10: Finally click "Lagre" (save). You must click “lagre” in order to have your “anti telephone seller/marketing calls” registration completed.
11: Now you see a page with a lot of text (Norwegian) and now white boxes. Quite high up it should say:
Registrerte reservasjoner for fødselsnummer XXXXXXXXXXX:
(Registered reservations against marketing/seller phone calls for ID number XXXXXXXXXXX)
Under follows the things you have registered against. Exactly what you registered against depends on which “I wish to register against….” boxes you crossed out on at the last page. But this is 2 examples of what it could/should say:
Reservasjon mot reklame og salg over telefon og mobiltelefon
(Registration against commercials and dales over telephone and mobile telephone)
Reservasjonen gjelder også for frivillige organisasjoner
(Registration also applies for volunteer organizations)
This means your registration is complete. Congratulations!
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash