Friggin cold phone callers

[Bob Eager]

[brass monkey]

How do you do this, Bob? Is it a function of the fax machine?

[Bob Eager]

Asterisk box.

[Brian Gaff]

The problem with this type of door caller is that there are in fact some genuine ones, but they are getting few and far between due to all the dodgy ones clouding peoples minds. Such is life.

Brian

[brass monkey]

:thumbs: interesting.

[Peter Johnson]

From yesterday: 'Is that Mr Johnson? We're doing a short 60 second life-style survey of the people in the Parkside Close area.' 'It's going to be very short because I'm putting the phone down now.'

(A double glazing company has been bothering me for some time with a ficticious story about me having asked it to call because I had previously said that I was thinking about having two windows replaced, unlikely because my house has been fully double glazed for around 20 years. I recently wrote to the company saying that if it happened again I would bill it for £100 for wasting my time and that I would take action if it didn't pay such an invoice. I hope the amount has forced it to remove my name from its lists; if it hasn't it's enough to make it worth my while to pursue.)

[Rick Hughes]

best I had was ... "would you loike a little bit of der back stuff put down n ter drive?" > No Thnx

Would you like to have your hedges cut > no Thnx

Would you have any antiques you want to sell? >No Thnx... at which point Pikey Tarmaccadm technician walked across drive to look into garden, my dogs in outside run launched themselves at the run fence ...

"Jeeesuz Mary Muvver of God .... Oi nearly shat myself, R dey dangerous animals, are dey safe ?

[bert]

In message , Bert Coules writes

TPS has absolutely no force outside the Uk - and very little inside.

[tim.....]

as a customer its voluntary, as a caller its compulsory

Actually UK companies. You can't get around it by basing just your call centre in India, you have to move the whole company

tim

[tim.....]

It does not matter what they "pretend" the call is about. If the ultimate aim is to sell something then it's banned

No it doesn't. They may think that it does, but it doesn't

TPS registration also applies to "companies that you have a relationship with" if the aim is to sell you something new.

Obviously it doesn't stop them from calling you about an administrative matter

[tim.....]

I had someone call me with a "survey" last week.

She asked some weird questions about whether we had carpets and whether anyone in the house had asthma (along with the what age group are you etc type questions.

And that was it.

I don't know if she was cold calling to try and get numbers for people to call back later to try to sell some wooden flooring, but she could have filtered me out form that by just establishing that I live in rented and it wasn't my responsibility

tim

[Dave Liquorice]

Or the pocket of the company that has been engaged to pay people to go round knocking on doors...

The only charity that gets any money out of me is the Great North Air Ambulance via their lottery, I might win something or I might need their services and I find it disgusting that all the Air Ambulance Services are not funded from central government via the NHS or what ever.

[Sam Plusnet]

Possibly, but since their livelihood depends upon it, I suspect that they've spent more time thinking about this topic than you or I.

It might be interesting to determine how a judge would view matters - but not interesting enough for me to attack this.

[dennis]

The government does fund helicopters where they actually save lives. Like mountain rescue by the RAF, etc.

However the helicopter air ambulances probably don't save any lives. If you think about it they are always secondary units to arrive and the paramedics that are already at the sceen have already done the work to stabilise the patient before the helicopter is even scrambled.

I am pretty sure that the same amount of money invested elsewhere would be far more effective in saving lives.

However its your money to spend as you please, just don't try and spend public money on them.

[charles]

[Snip]

A couple of years ago, I was very near someone who collapsed, two separate Firsat Aid responders arrived and could not revive him. Then a helicopter arrived - some 20 minutes after he'd ceased breathing. The medical staff spenta nother 30 minutes on site, trying to revive him - to no avail. My own, limited, first aid experience told me that there is less than 2 minutes to get the blood circulation in brain restored if there is to be any chance of teh patient recovering.

[Dave Liquorice]

AFAIK all the mountain rescue teams are charity funded. No help from central goverment, I don't think any run helicopters. RAF Search and Rescue is part of the RAF and principly there to rescue RAF personal when they crash, rescuing the general public is training. That's assuming that the RAF/MOD continue to fund RAF S&R, there has been some talk about them out sourcing it...

Complete and utter bollocks. Car crash couple of hundred yards down the road from here the air ambulance was here a good 30 mins before the paramedic ambulance. The local "first responder" ambulance arrived in about 5 minutes but the crew of that are only first responders not paramedics. What they can do is very limited.

I hope you have an accident when out in the country side and a paramedic ambulance will take the best part of an hour to get to you. Not an accident that'll kill you quickly. I'd like you to bleed to death internally, maybe a crushed rib cage and punctured lung. And just to make sure it's suitably painful a limb with a displaced open fracture.

[bert]

Correct on all counts. Equally Lowland Search and Rescue and Cave Rescue are voluntary organisations. (I think MR in Scotland might get public funding)

[Jethro_uk]

There can be weird exceptions, usually involving extreme cold. There was a readers digest article over 20 years ago about a young boy who fell into a pool and was dead for 40 minutes, but still revived.

[Chris J Dixon]

Yet another demonstration that there is no limit to the areas in which you lack understanding.

A relative of mine owes her life to the London Air Ambulance, following an accident on the Cromwell Road.

Even the Air Ambulance crew didn't really expect her to make it.

Chris

[Andy Champ]

I had one yesterday, from a solar panel company. Did I remember him calling some months ago? No, I said. But then I pointed out that he was breaking the law. "What, by doing my day job?" So I explained. He hung up on me in a huff before I could ask him to remove me from his list.

Andy