This morning the very first ever nuisance caller managed to get himself through the caller filter, in the two years since I installed them.
Obviously from the Indian sub-continent asking about my health and claiming to be medically qualified, obviously trying to sell something health related - he failed miserably to get through the final level filter - ME..
I will not mention the number he called from, because it was obviously a spoofed number, belonging to some innocent individual.
For the past week I'm getting around 3 a day through my BT8600. I know who they are as sometimes they are leaving a answerphone message. It's Green Star Energy, my current Gas and Electricity supplier, and they want me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. Before all the calls I may have given them a relatively high score but now the score is likely to be zero. Your post has prompted me to blacklist the two numbers they are using.
on 23/03/2018, alan_m supposed :
It seems as if they all now need a round of applause for doing their jobs, even the doctors surgery ;-)
I can often tell when I answer a call from an Asian call centre because, before they say a single word, I can hear background jabbering babble, whooping, crying babies, mopeds and suchlike.
If I hear that distant commotion when I answer, I just hang up immediately.
I am fairly sure the doctors concerned do not want this. Managers who Mrs. Thatcher kindly put in charge of the NHS set these things up firstly as way to justify their own existence and secondly to obtain a stick to beat the doctors with.
90% of the useless lot who now manage the NHS (at all levels) were put there when labour were in charge.
I find my true call is very effective since people have to say their name and when I hear their name and have no idea who it is I hit the dump button.
The biggest problem with these things based on black listed numbers is that when no number is there they have to get screened every single time and many people in say nhs, or council simply hang up. Brian
My concern with these systems is that I might lose a legitimate call. The unknown name might be a courier delivering a package I have been waiting for, it might be a nurse in the hospital phoning on behalf of one of my relatives, someone's partner, someone who has found my property in the street etc. I'm not saying I accept all the calls but the cautious side of me likes to make the judgement myself.
Well obviously, because the 1980s managers had retired by then. I hold no brief for Blair, who followed the same policies more avidly, but Thatcher established the principle that professionals shouldn't be trusted and that the money men and bureaucrats should keep them in line.
Just set it to shunt all unknown callers to the answerphone then. That way legitimate callers can always leave a message.
Illegitimate ones never seem to bother leaving messages. We probably get 4 to 5 illegitimate ones every day. Truecall has been a godsend.
Tim
The number of legitimate calls you will lose is vanishing small. These type of phones and telecom supplier provided similar services are now so common that any official body (hospital, police, doctors surgery, card fraud, banks etc.) will have to present a phone number.
With a blocked number the caller only has to obey the simple instructions the phone gives when automatically answering. Call calling robots currently don't understand these instructions.
Do you also worry about how many thousands of spam emails your Internet supplier rejects on your behalf?
Case study - an elderly relative of mine in Denmark sent me an email asking for my help in contacting a friend of hers in the Scottish Borders as she could not get her on the phone. She wondered if the numbers had been changed. It turns out the called party was using Truecall and my relative was not following the proceedings.
Undoubtably that can happen when folk encounter the system but I'm very happy to accept the risk of that rare eventuality in exchange for effective blocking of multiple daily nuisance calls.
Tim
Yes given how many legitimate messages they reject. I want to see all e-mail.
Jonathan
What, you can't train their filtering?
+1 Perhaps one odd call missed but during the same time hundreds/thousands of junk calls blocked.
Jonathan pretended :
You can usually turn an ISP's filters off, except when your ISP implements a top level rejection because of a flood of spam from a certain telco.
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