Getting tired of unsolicited calls

If its scam calls you are getting then TPS wont work. I work from home and the endless ringing used to drive me nuts. Been through several house phones due to me letting it get to me. Got Sky Talk Shield now and its dropped to practically 0 on the landline. Apart from sales calls from sky.

Email isnt really an issue. I find Gmail is pretty good at filtering spam and email isnt intrusive anyway.

Fortunately i dont get that much on my mobile. I get a few 'calling about your recent car accident' ones but its not too many. Unfortunately i dont particularly have the luxury of being able to ignore calls from unknown numbers to my mobile because it could mean missing out on work.

They soon hang up when you tell them to "!!!! off and annoy someone else"

lincroft1710 wrote: »

What I love about the "car accident" calls are that they say " someone from your address". When you ask them "which address", they of course can't answer as they have no info about you whatsoever.

If I have time, I play along. I agree that the car accident must have been really horrific, and chatter on about how life has been affected since (nothing true of course). I never actually get around to giving any specific details, because when they finally push for that information, I tell them that they must have all of the details if they know that I was in an accident - after all, it must have been so bad that I can't remember having an accident at all! They ring off immediately, but in the meantime, I've wasted some of their time, and hopefully that means another couple of 'customers' will be spared phone calls that day.

The funniest was probably a call at my mum's about a Windows problem on her computer. The chap could fix it of course, for only £69 :eek:. I had answered the phone, and decided to play along. I asked all sorts of questions, as though I knew absolutely nothing about computers, and I agreed that it definitely needed fixing. I also commented a couple of times on what a good price it was for the repair, and best of all, for my peace of mind. Each time he tried to get me to pay, I asked another question, and said how worrying it all was. I was soooo happy that he had called to tell me about this problem, and that although I didn't really understand it, it was a real help to have people such as himself ready to repair the computer. Eventually, as he felt that he had reeled me in, and I said that yes, I had my card in my hand (after 'going to get my bag so that I could get the card out of my purse' - another few minutes wasted ), I said that I was ready to read out the number, but I had just one more question. He was getting fed up of me by now, but of course, wanted my card details, so agreed to answer me. My reply was 'Don't you need a computer to have these problems, because we don't have one in the house?':rotfl:

It was around 20-30 minutes of his time wasted .

Another tactic that I use is when people call me by my first name. I get all snooty and ask them who gave them permission to call me by my Christian name? 'It's only friends and family who are allowed to do that, and as I have never met you, you don't qualify on either count. Please do not refer to me by my first name again. I am Mrs X to you'. One young man told me that I was rude, to which I replied that he was a rude and impolite young man, and did he not know that people with good manners check whether it is acceptable to call somebody by their first name before doing so. He put the phone down :rotfl: