Ways to stop overseas sales calls discussion

Paddy_Landau

rickbonar wrote: »

... press 9 to collect" ... I guess if someone presses 9 then it connects you to a premium number at £1.50 or more per minute.

I have read that this is exactly what happens.

In that case, I fully agree with you on it being made illegal; it would be like charging you a stiff (and secret) amount for receiving an unsolicited package in the post.

The telecoms should never have implemented such a scheme!

rickbonar

A lot of people must be taken by this Paddy, you know I've had similar sorts of calls myself in the past.

Again a lot a people won't take a stand and refuse to pay BT, Virgin etc. and just simply pay the bill. And it's not on you know!

Granny or your 5 year old daughter could easy press that 9 or phone X factor. ... no ...no ..no.

All these numbers are really the same thing ... whether it's X factor or the message saying press 9.

Ban the lot if it's over 1p a minute.

Premium services if wanted can be paid through traceable credit cards or cash/cheque subscriptions .... like in the old days.

rickbonar

Paddy_Landau wrote: »

You are kidding, right?


Well, that's a bit extreme, but VOIP numbers are indeed untraceable unless the telecom somehow happens to keep a record of the IP address from which the telephone call is coming. AFAIK, that isn't possible because of the way it routes through the telephone network, though I may be wrong.


Good point! Time to get concerned.

I wasn't kidding about about the moral drift that we're all suffering from; I didn't mean that the premium rate call services were causing (in themselves) the problem. Just another symptom to which I was alluding.

All of which together fosters in an attitude everyone that it's ok to fiddle this and that and everyone from the PM to the Pope and bank manager even your local bobby is in on the act:A
In fact you may feel odd that you aren't ...

I used to have trust in some of the government depts but no longer.

ShakeYourmoney

When I was a student (many, many years ago now!) there was a fellow student in my lodgings, an extremely clever Anglo-Indian who when walking along the street with me, just for fun, would "converse" somewhat loudly, so that pedestrians passing could hear, in a completely fictitious nonsense language which was very plausible. (He was more brilliant than me, got a First, and is now a university engineering Professor!:))

It strikes me that this could be a good way to answer these calls but I don't know if I could create the "language" on-the-spot. I do however speak a reasonable amount of German. I wonder if any of the Asians making these calls have learned it?

Paddy_Landau

ShakeYourmoney wrote: »

... in a completely fictitious nonsense language

I used to do that for fun with my children when they were young.

That's a great idea!

As an alternative, record some language unlikely to be understood (perhaps one of the many endangered languages) and replay it over the phone.

John_Pierpoint

My toddler grandson recommends this soundtrack, which should do nicely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTWv63RyLP8

rayday2

I know its probably been said before but why do I have to pay not to receive phonecalls? All the options open to me on BT involve call barring etc which costs a lot!

These calls are getting upsetting now, most are unavailable but one today had a number (when googled is used by tons of spam companies)

Yesterday my daughter answered an asian gentleman she told him I was out (16 shes a bit innocent) she put the phone down went upstairs, rang again same man. I came in phone rang, asian man talking about Sky and did I get it via dish or cable, I told him I didn't talk sales calls and had opted out. He rang back again a couple of minutes later, I told him again I didn't talk calls. He had the cheek to ring again now feeling like harassement so I erm shouted I took it as harassement and would ring the police.

Today again unavaible numbers, man from the UK apparently with so much echo on the line asked for someone purposely sounding muffled, said it wasn't them apparently its ok they were doing an offer in my area - again I told them it was harassment.

I honestly don't care about people earning a living, what I do care about is feeling like I am being pursued in my own home. I am ex directory and of course TPS registered I could honestly sit and cry and I am usually a rational person!

NonGeographicalMan

rayday2 wrote: »

I know its probably been said before but why do I have to pay not to receive phonecalls? All the options open to me on BT involve call barring etc which costs a lot!

I absolutely agree.

It is a total and utter disgrace that BT Wholesale is still allowed to charge extra for caller display on landlines when there has never been a charge for this service from the day that mobile phones were invented. Even if you pay for Caller Display on your BT landline it is in an inferior service as it does not give you any caller display for an overseas call whereas a mobile phone will do so.

Similarly from good old BT Wholesale/Openreach we have Anonymous Call Rejection, an almost completely unusable service that surely only the desperate would use that blocks anyone calling you who is either number withheld or the much more common number unavailable (large companies and call centres of numerous kinds). So it isn't much use and would also be very inconvenient but anyhow it costs £5 per month or something similarly extortionate.

Then there is Choose To Refuse which for another fiver a month or so lets you press a button when an undesirable caller calls you with their caller ID so that in future that Caller ID cannot call you any more. But Choose To Refuse does not work for Withheld, Unavailable or International numbers which are where nearly all the unwanted calls come from!!! Again another unusable service. Why one should pay extra for a service that doesn't work is beyond me

In my opinion the cheapest method of dealing with these calls is simply to move on to very quickly to asking these people if they can't find a better and more honourable way to earn a living than trying to call people in another country in order to try and scam them and then ask them how they can sleep at night behaving in such a way. If everyone who got these calls did this no employee in any of these call centres would last more than a day in the job and the problem would go away.

Unfortunately too many of the British population are dumb enough that they actually fall for the scams and even those who don't fall for them think it is clever to engage in polite conversation and seem like they are interested. All this actually does is to give the hardened scammer a feeling there is hope and that his cold calling may pay off sooner or later. These people are not highly intelligent and they generally only understand short and very blunt messages so those who try to engage in long mind games with them are generally simply only wasting their own time.

rayday2

I sound so childish but it simply is not fair. There should be a way they do it for free especially if you feel upset by them. These ones lately the people are not nice slimey sales people they are actually persistant - sure they are working within guidelines etc but I just feel my phoneline is hijacked and I have to pay to get it back. If it was children knock a door running you could get them an asbo and these companies get paid to do the same but on the phone! Sorry whinging never solves anything but the internet is full of people upset by it and the options are just pay pay pay

savemoney

I agree we shouldn't have to pay to stop these parasite but until there is a mechanism where it is free and we have a regulator who is far more proactive in fining UK companies even when they have call centres abroad we have no choice. I use to be angry about getting such calls but it just isnt worth it. I ended up getting a device called truecall which is very good at stopping cold calls abet at a cost to you then we have no choice but to take measures to stop them at some cost to us