Why we built Don't Call Me
Don’t Call Me Inc. (StopAppel in French) is a 100% Canadian consumer protection company based in North Toronto. We help Canadians reduce persistent unwanted solicitation calls by making it practical to exercise rights that otherwise must be pursued one company or organization at a time.
We are a very small team, and the service is intentionally low-cost and self-serve. The goal is to make protection practical for as many people as possible, without pretending to be something we are not. Don’t Call Me is not a government service, law firm, phone carrier, or call-blocking app. We use the rights Canadians already have to help stop persistent solicitation calls wherever those rights apply.
Founder's note
Don’t Call Me was founded by Aaron Capar, MA, Public Policy and Public Administration.
I grew up in Winnipeg and studied political science in Montreal. I have been fortunate to build a career that has included work in the Canadian civil service, NGOs in Geneva, foreign governments, and the pharmaceutical industry. For the past three years, I have been a biotech startup founder working to develop new treatments for cancer.
Don’t Call Me is a side passion project. I created it because I wanted to help other people avoid a problem that had become deeply frustrating in my own life.
A few years ago, I donated to a charity whose work I genuinely believed in. Then the calls started, first from that charity and later from organizations I had never communicated with before.
At the time, I was going through a difficult financial period while building a company and could not yet pay myself an income. When I explained that I could not afford to donate, the response was: “So how about we put you down for $50 this month?”
I did not have $50.
A positive act of giving had turned into anxiety every time the phone rang. I did not want to be rude, but I also did not want to sit through another long script designed to make saying no difficult.
Around the same time, I began receiving weekly upsell calls from my phone and internet providers. It made me think about how much harder these interactions can be for aging seniors, people facing cognitive, communication or other accessibility barriers, and anyone who is already overwhelmed, stressed, or short on time.
Not everyone is prepared to make a careful decision during an unexpected call, particularly when the caller has been trained to create urgency, overcome objections, and use guilt, politeness or uncertainty to secure a commitment. If these calls caused me this much distress, I wondered how many people were being pressured into donations, subscriptions, upgrades or purchases they would not otherwise have chosen.
That led me to look more closely at Canada’s unsolicited-calling laws. I learned that the federal Do Not Call List has major gaps by design, but Canadians also have more rights than most people realize. The problem is that those rights usually have to be exercised separately with every company, charity and organization that calls.
That is not a realistic process for anyone to manage.
Don’t Call Me was created to take that burden off individuals. We identify the appropriate contacts, apply the relevant rules, and manage requests across a growing map of recurring callers so customers do not have to confront each organization themselves.
For me, Don’t Call Me is a consumer-protection and social-impact project, not simply another company. Its purpose is to reduce an everyday source of stress and help Canadians regain control over who calls their number. Customers contribute by reporting recurring callers, helping us build a live map of companies, charities and organizations contacting people across Canada. The service grows through shared information, with each customer helping make it more useful for the next.