Nuisance Phone Calls

[PatsyB]

Yesterday I received not one but three phone calls one saying they was BT and that two people were riding on my internet and using the bandwidth ..I said realy cna you block them making out I was taking it all in, oh yes she said I am the manager of BT etc etc I said give me your number I will ring back she gave me a number and I hung up...I checked the number on the internet and it told em many had received this call and when they rang back it would charge you so when she rang back as I knew she would I told her listen lady I am not even with BT she said oh I know you are with Virgin ,I replied listen I am not with iether so please refrain from ringing me again and out the phone down....what i wnat to knwo is there anything we can do to stop these silly phone calls, I was told the police will do nothing about it...then later two more calls came through another bogus number I just did not respond, is everyone else having these calls or they just picking at random the thing is they know where you live your post code etc...can be a little intimidating to some

 

[Robinredbreast]

Hi Patsy, my elderly dad used to get a lot of these type of calls, it made my blood boil and I told them where to go after a while, he is in his 90's !! These people and 'companies' are despicable
This could be helpful :- http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/cordless-phones/article/ten-tips-to-stop-cold-calls

 

[bulkbiker]

Have you registered your number with the Telephone Preference Service? TPS

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html

It helps a bit. Otherwise I get my other half to scream down the phone at them in fluent cantonese which usually works.

 

[CollieBoy]

<snip> Otherwise I get my other half to scream down the phone at them in fluent cantonese which usually works.

I found that Scots Gaelic or Breton works rather well (not many speakers of either in the call centres)

 

[jay hay-char]

TPS will help with nuisance calls from the UK - although even some of them don't seem to be discouraged, probably because any penalties that get imposed are derisory compared to the money that the companies concerned are making.

The real nuisance calls are those from overseas: UK laws and TPS don't apply to them and they're often criminal/scam calls. The only effective way that I have found of dealing with them is to have Caller ID installed on our phone line and only to answer calls from numbers that we recognise. Most of the remainder will be nuisance calls and if one of the calls is genuine, they can always leave a message on our answering service.

Nowadays, between Skype, mobile phones, email and the rest, there are only two or three people who regularly call us on our land line, so we tend not to answer the phone at all; anybody who needs to speak to us knows that if they leave a message, we will call back.

 

[PatsyB]

I said to the women who sounded like an Indian or Pakistani I am recording this call and will have to police she said and what do you think they cna do laughs I just said don't call this number again and get a decent job laughs, but like my mother who is also 90 it causes them stress and needs to be stopped!!!

 

[Oldvatr]

Yesterday I received not one but three phone calls one saying they was BT and that two people were riding on my internet and using the bandwidth ..I said realy cna you block them making out I was taking it all in, oh yes she said I am the manager of BT etc etc I said give me your number I will ring back she gave me a number and I hung up...I checked the number on the internet and it told em many had received this call and when they rang back it would charge you so when she rang back as I knew she would I told her listen lady I am not even with BT she said oh I know you are with Virgin ,I replied listen I am not with iether so please refrain from ringing me again and out the phone down....what i wnat to knwo is there anything we can do to stop these silly phone calls, I was told the police will do nothing about it...then later two more calls came through another bogus number I just did not respond, is everyone else having these calls or they just picking at random the thing is they know where you live your post code etc...can be a little intimidating to some

I had similar calls from supposedly Talktalk, saying my PC was generating spam traffic and exceeding bandwidth etc. Could I visit their website and download a virus scanner to resolve the issue. This too is a scam, and the download contains malware. Do not follow their 'advice'.

I happen to be with TalkTalk, and they offer a simple 'Block Last caller' facility which is free and easy to use..

 

[PatsyB]

yes I do believe they gave me that in my call to them I wrote it down and now all I have to do is find it ...I find these people very annoying and wonder why their lives are so sad they have to do this ?

 

[DizzyChick]

There is a BT phone you can get that stops all the unwanted calls. It will not allow automatic dialer calls to come through as if the number is not in your phone they have to announce themselves then you choose if you want to speak to them. This has stopped all the cold calling we use to get.

 

[tim2000s]

I like it when you get the phone calls from "Microsoft" or a PC vendor. It's a fab opportunity to wind them up. The last one who did it got taken for a right old run around for twenty minutes, until we got to a point where I said "Windows? You mean microsoft? Well I use a Mac. No wonder this isn't working".

They promptly hung up on me

 

[catherinecherub]

I said to the women who sounded like an Indian or Pakistani I am recording this call and will have to police she said and what do you think they cna do laughs I just said don't call this number again and get a decent job laughs, but like my mother who is also 90 it causes them stress and needs to be stopped!!!

Don't engage with them PatsyB.
I have found that it is best to leave the phone off the hook and let them ramble away whilst I go and make a drink or do some housework. By the time that you get back to the phone they have disappeared.
Another alternative is to keep a whistle by the phone and when they call is to give a loud blast of the whistle down the phone. It works well, they disappear.

 

[PatsyB]

I asked one yesterday who kept rining my mobile ...are you ringing from India he said oh no a call center I said stop ringing me I am not interested I then checked the number on the net and yes the number was from abroad...they think we all silly or what??