Potential scam, or a wrong number?

I have had several recently from France, Germany and Switzerland, but I don't answer.

We have had a few silent calls from a number in central London. Nobody at the other end. Assumed to be a *high cost return call scam*

I find you get that allot with the Indian scammers, they use a robo dialler which can dial a call before there is a scammer spare to take the call.

So if you answer more quickly than expected, they have no one to connect you to, and they then just drop the call since your time or inconvenience is of no concern to them!

If it's an 0207 number, where does the high cost come in?

More likely to be one of the compensation claim companies touting for potential business than a wrong number.

I had a similar call last week.

All call centres do that when making outgoing calls. They call loads of numbers and when someone picks up, or, more likely, when someone speaks, the computer looks for an agent who is free. Then you get the "poing" sound, and you are connected to a human.

I've never had a robocall like this. Usually it's a human. I ask, "Who do you want to speak to?" This usually floors them; if you call a number, usually you want to speak to a particular person, especially if it's a landline, which could have been picked up by a guest (or burglar).

The only exception is survey calls who call numbers at random, but they say at once who they are and what they are doing.

Yes I get them all the time.

Bill

Tim Lamb pretended :

This was not a silent call. It was a very clear English voice, but obviously a computer provided voice. It just seemed odd that the voice gave no indication who they were, or what the call was about, just the question and my answer which was accepted / seemed to be understood by the system and the call ended.

The CLID is often spoofed. Often with your own dialling code, to fool you into thinking it's someone local calling you

So, when you reply, you'll be replying to the spoofed CLID number. And, if that's an 0207 number, it's not high cost.

Or, I've completely misunderstood?

I presume that the telephone system (unlike email) does not make a distinction between From and Reply To, so you can only reply (call back) the number that is purporting to have called you. Even spammers can't make you ring back a premium rate number if the number that is alleged to be calling is a geographical number.

It's a shame that the point at which calls enter the UK POTS system can't weed out any which have CLID which is a UK number (on the grounds that call from the UK would not have taken the international route to enter POTS).

I wonder if it will ever get to the stage that telephone companies in most reputable countries will tighten the control on how calls enter the system (including by VOIP), so as to deny known spammers from making such calls (or blocking them somewhere along the way). There will be some countries / telcos which refuse to do that, but they can't stop people drawing negative inferences about any call that has come that way. It will of course be bad new for legitimate calls that originate in a blacklisted country, but that may force the telcos in those countries to tighten their restrictions.

I'd like to see a very strict rules that a business that cold-calls anyone (ie not in response to a call that they have received) is regarded as socially unacceptable (irrespective of whether it is genuine or a scam - either way, it's still spam). Abolish the TPS and make it a blanket opt-in (rather than opt-out) to receive spam.

Possibly. I was referring to the scammer's costs, not the victim's . My point is the calls are not originating from London (020 etc) but overseas, so the scammers are making an international call to you (Not that that's intrinsically much more expensive for them anyway)

Answering with dead air is every bit as effective against such callers.

The other end goes "Hello! Hello? HELLO! *HELLO!*" with puzzled silences interspersed. Then they line drop.

Answerphone filters most of my unwanted calls but the odd one still gets through if I am expecting another external call. One very persistent nuisance caller turned out to be my electricity suppliers call centre. They obviously don't employ enough staff since most times dead air.

I would suggest that is a very risky assumption with many phone services now being cloud based. Calls that originate from the UK could still enter pots from cloud servers not in the UK.

This is one of those "easy to say" and difficult to do things in practice.

Although I can see a good case for genuine call centres, working on behalf of legitimate UK companies, to display a UK number. Especially as some people block all international numbers.

Yes - and hold companies that have a presence in the UK and use such techniques, responsible for all such calls, even if the call originates in a foreign call centre.

Probably trying to avoid their "staff" being told by people like me to "F*ck off scammer." Which causes much hilarity when I answer the landline, when WFH, in the middle of a Teams work call!

This. If you pick up but don't speak the prerecord message doesn't play out.

No, it is an automated dialler that can't find one of their 'humans' free to talk to the called party when the called party answers the call..