Nuisance phone calls - how to stop them?

[Andrew Gabriel]

There are (or were back when BT was a monopoly) several levels of ex-directory. IIRC, they were...

Not in the printed directory, but available from directory enquiries. Not in the printed directory nor available from directory enquiries, but can be operator connected. Not in the printed directory nor available from directory enquiries nor operator connection. Not even available to most BT staff.

One of these last two is called NQR "No Quoted Record". The others all have names too such as XD, but I can't recall what they all are now -- this was a long time ago.

You could choose one of the first 3. The last one was only available to the likes of senior politicians, royalty, security lines, etc, and also to a colleague back at the time who got someone in BT to mark his line as such as a demo when they were explaining it to us. This caused him both some amusement and some grief years later when he found it was still marked, as there were other implications too, e.g. Faults dept had to pass him on to a special dept to deal, as they couldn't see any info about the line on their computers.

[Ian White]

A friend did all this about ten years ago. It was never commercialised because of the ECM and weapons modules.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I can only speak for those I have dealings with. Two prospective employers (I'm freelance) have switchboards which withhold the number.

[Stephen Gower]

the CLI signal coming through (a split second) before the call proper is put through. If the number was blacklisted (perhaps even not-whitelisted) then the computer took the line "off hook" and the caller would always get the busy tone. I'm surprised it's taken such a long time for a commercial product to come about, and moreso that it seems less sophisticated than what Peter was doing 15 years ago.

[Invisible Man]

Despite numerous complaints and assurances in the past BT are once more making marketing calls to me from 08003289393. Yet another complaint to BT and to the TPS. BT have to be the most appalling company in the UK to try and deal with

- unless of course the Carphone Warehouse Group are as bad as they used to be. At least I can avoid dealing with them and have for the last 2 or

3 years.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If you obtain your telephone service from BT, sales calls from them aren't covered by the TPS, as you are already a 'valued customer'. ;-(

[Invisible Man]

... and the only LLU at the local exchange is CPW and there is no cable in this area.

[Owain]

All it takes is a bit of PHP on the intranet to trawl through the call-logger records to see which extension last called a certain outgoing number.

Owain

[Huge]

I screamed abuse at a BT salesdroid some years ago when she woke me from deep slumber following a long journey home from holiday (which involved a

4AM start - bloody charter flights...)

After I calmed down, she told me what to ask for so that they never called me again. Whatever it was, it worked, because they never have (fortunately, since it saves me the effort of chaging telcos).

I just wosh I could remember what it was.

[Jules]

I moved countries, which worked equally well ;)

[Huge]

That's a tad drastic. Especially since the only country I'd likely move to is the USA, where nuisance calls are an absolute nightmare, even with the Federal "Do Not Call" list.

[Jules]

Heh, well I didn't do it for that reason, obviously ;-) But it's really nice to be free of idiots such as BT and NTL (or whatever they're calling themselves this week). Mind you, our current phone/TV/'net provider have their silly moments* too, so maybe it just goes with the territory (their customer service is light years ahead of any such company I came across in the UK, though)

• such as "please call us so we can install fibre up to your house" - when it's 20 below zero outside and the ground's going to be like concrete for the next four months :-)

I've not found it's a problem, TBH. We get maybe a couple of daytime junk calls a week, which almost never coincide with anyone being in anyway (and they never leave a message, so other than them being on the phone's call log there's no impact on us). Oddly enough they're nearly always from Florida - I remember when the UK was being bombarded with Florida junk, too (perhaps it still is?).

I think it must be one of those things which varies by area, because I'd heard the US was supposedly the home of junk calls too, but experience has been otherwise so far.

cheers

Jules

[Adrian C]

Interesting approach. Thanks, some food for thought!

[ralph]

If you have a phone which allows you to allocate different ring tones to ca llers, give everybody in your contacts list one ringtone (the same for all, if you wish). Then any other tone is a call from someone you don't know, s o, at least, you don't have to answer it. If it is an unknown caller with a n important communication then they can leave a message.