Nuisance calls

[Scott]

Indeed, this is what I was referring to. It would also in his case require facility to read the instructions :-)

[Jethro_uk]

There's no law that you have to use the POTS you get with broadband.

I'm with virgin who bizarrely make it cheaper to have POTS+TV+BB than standalone BB. But the phone hasn't been plugged in for 4 years.

[Allan]

[snip]

The existence of suckers lists is well known. I'd love to get on the opposite: the *uckers list. Despite my best efforts to wind the cold callers up, string them along, waste their time, and listen to their abuse when they realise they're being wound up, I don't think my number gets on to a *uckers list of "people you don't want to cold call becuase they will waste your time" and I still get a few cold calls (which provides some entertainment when I'm in the mood).

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed.

I am on PAYG phone simply because that is the cheapest way to get line rental.

Ditto my mobile.

I hardely ever make or revieve phone calls.

Nearly all comunication is IP based. or SMS

[The Natural Philosopher]

Depending on my mood I will play the simpleton or be aggressively rude.

Its the only way

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Easy enough to add a new number to Truecall. Either via the handset, or online. But like all such things you do need to RTFM.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Likely outgoing only lines. Which they don't want blocked with people trying to call.

[Steve Walker]

Answerphones can cause their own problems.

We received a couple of calls while we were out, but no message was left. The next day a message was left. The person calling had been reluctant to leave a message telling us that a relative had died and hung on to try and talk to use directly, but eventually decided that they had to leave one. That meant we didn't find out about the death until 17:30 on Friday evening and needed to be in Sligo by 11:15 on Saturday morning! The last flight that night was 20:30 and we couldn't get organised, get our children to my parents, get to the airport and through security in time and the earliest the next morning was too late for us to pick up a hire car and get right across Ireland. In the end we had to egt organised, leave at 22:00, drive to Holyhead, cross to Dublin, drive to Sligo (arriving with 15 minutes to spare), attend the funeral service, the burial and the reception afterwards, then immediately leave for Belfast, cross to Stranraer and drive back to Manchester.

If we hadn't had an answerphone, they'd likely have asked a family member and got one of our mobile numbers, getting the info to us earlier.

SteveW

[Jethro_uk]

Ah, living the dream.

Personally I am finding that not only are more and more outfits not contactable by email - they only give you a ****ing phone number anyway. Preferring a 19th century method over a 20th century one.

[Steve Walker]

Yes, I understand that, but just stick the central switchboard number on the outgoing calls - in all likelihood they are going through it anyway.

Other than private household and mobile numbers, there should be no excuse for not giving a valid number out, even if it is just a central switchboard or head office.

I had a problem a few years ago where a rogue autodialler kept phoning my mobile and giving silent calls, but the number was withheld and I had no idea where it was coming from. My phone provider confirmed that it was a rogue autodialler from a company, but would not give me any information to identify them without the police being involved, but the police didn't want to be involved as "we get loads of nuisance call cases and we can't spare the manpower."

All everyone kept saying was to change my number - which I couldn't do as family, friends, HMRC, the MOT centre, banks, insurance companies, and most of all, agencies that I get contracts through, all had the existing number. I would never be able to be sure that I had informed everyone of the change and would almost certainly lost work because of it.

Luckily the problem resolved itself after five or six weeks. It would have been so much easier if "a" number had been attached to the calls, allowing me to track down the company involved and tell them to stop.

SteveW

[Martin Brown]

Not worth the effort - interposing an answerphone between you and the outside world is a good second line of defence for unknown CLIDs.

Try answering with "dead air" as another tactic.

The poor droids find a silent autodialled caller most disconcerting.

[alan_m]

Possibly something to do with age and what they are targeting. Approaching retirement I started getting a lot of unsolicited snail mail offering funeral plans and rip-off insurance policies that would only pay out after my death.

I don't know what most of the phone cold callers want as most hang up when initially confronted with a machine message. The few that leave a message on the answerphone are:

i) Boiler replacement - they start off by claiming that a boiler over

10/15 years old is illegal..... Typical scare tactics to catch the gullible.

ii) We have an arrest warrant in your name - press 1 to speak to the case officer. This one presents the same number which is now in my blacklist.

iii) We will be in your area shortly and offer a professional oven cleaning service.

Although probably not classed as cold calling but I got a quote for double glazing from Crystal Windows. They then started ringing every other day despite being told multiple times that I had the windows fitted by a rival company and being given the promise that my name would be removed from the list. Again now in my blacklist so i don't know if they are still calling.

[John Rumm]

I nearly managed to sucker someone from "microsoft" the other day into attempting to spell out in advance what he wanted me to do when I got to the computer ("because the wire on the phone is not long enough to get to the room with the computer!" :-))

He tried the "give me you mobile number" angle - but alas there is no signal here...

Had he of not got fed up after 10 mins, there was massive scope for a decent wind up!

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

Set my mother up with a CPR call blocker. Went through menu and applied settings to block all generic options such as International, unavailable, voip (presumably this blocks 056) etc then added my own prefixes such as 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 070, 08, 09 and so on. Scammers have started using mobile numbers to call in so I had to add quite a range of mobile prefixes so family and friends mobiles weren't blocked.

was the one I fitted so already had a large database of scammers pre-programmed.

[John Rumm]

Its worth watching some of the Youtube videos by Jim Browning. He has managed to get remote access inside some of the Indian call centres, and dissect how they do business, place calls etc, and the records and databases they keep. Some of the money made by these outfits make is quite scary - 1000's / day in many cases.

The best ruse was when he managed to knobble the audio file being used for a new robo call campaign. So instead of being the setup for a refund scam, it was a nice general warning about how scammers cold call etc. It took them ages to work out why they were getting no response to the campaign!

[John Rumm]

Indeed there is not, and there are also a few BB technologies that don't actually require a phone line anyway. However for many the deal is structured to encourage you to take the package of BB + Phone + whatever, and since you have now in effect "paid" for the phone, it makes less sense to pay for it again elsewhere.

Personally I would not want to be without my landlines... better voice quality, lower latency, integration with my PABX, and they circumvent the somewhat ropey mobile signal here (i.e. it works, but only in some places in some rooms of the house).

[John Rumm]

The irony I find with VoIP calling, is it often seems to work out more expensive for UK national calling the using a bundled call package on a landline. I have a SIP account I keep about for emergencies on on the rare occasion I need more lines, but if I did more than a few hours a week on it, it would be more expensive than the £5/month or whatever it is I pay for unmetered calls on the landline.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Forcing you to hang on in a queue - while likely paying for the call - is far more in their favour than having to answer a free email.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

But could they do it to a group of outgoing lines? I've no real idea of how these are organised, but may have lots of individual numbers.

(Going back to my Swap Shop days on BBC TV where we kept the outgoing lines - used to put contributors on air - a state secret ;-)

Which is where Truecall works so well.

With Truecall, you'd put all those numbers in its memory - via your mobile phone list or whatever - and they'd not know you had a call blocker.

[Steve Walker]

You can guarantee that they have far fewer lines than phones and run them all through the switchboard. Many places will also have a few lines that do not go through the switchboard for emergency use if the switchboard goes down - this can sometimes involve getting a handfull of emergency phones out of cupboards and plugging them in (I assume that one pair in the socket connects to the switchboard and another [shared by multiple sockets] connects to a real phone line).

But I don't want to do that - some callers, of calls that I really do need to receive, won't leave a message and also withhold their number - so I HAVE to accept and actually answer calls with withheld numbers just in case. And I can't guarantee that I'd manage to enter every possible genuine number either, so some non-withheld numbers would get blocked. Part of why I wish it was a legal requirement to give at least a central number, so I could see which are valid ones for myself at the time.

SteveW