Ways to stop overseas sales calls discussion

prowla

My calls usually go something like this.

Phone: ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.
Me: Hello
Indian Voice: Hello - can I speak to Mr XXXXXX?
Me. Who is calling?
Indian Voice: Am I speaking with Mr XXXXXX?
Me: Which company are you calling from?
Indian Voice: We wish to do a survey, are you Mr XXXXXX?
Me: I am not interested - please remove me from your list.
Phone: brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

savemoney

I dont get them now as I use truecall although I still get calls from PPI companies they dont get through

Herongull

I got Truecall a couple of months ago, and I wouldn't be without it.

It completely blocks all the nuisance calls whether they are from the UK or aboard, but lets all the legitimate calls through.

You can configure it in various ways to suit your preferences and personal situation, but for me just the basic settings work perfectly.

PS As far as I know, the cheapest place to get Truecall is the Suzy Lamplugh Trust Shop (about £3 cheaper than Amazon - I got mine from Amazon) http://shop.suzylamplugh.org/Alarms-and-Devices/trueCall/prod_9.html

Truecall isn't cheap, but it is lovely not being hassled every day by nuisance calls.....

NonGeographicalMan

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I discovered that the procedures for complaining about the misuse of private data were designed to make complaining as difficult as possible and the whole charade had been created because the UK was in danger of being ostracised for not having effective data privacy procedures and laws.

The ICO makes you fill out horribly cumbersome Word documents will appalling formatting that keeps them making them jump back to the top of the page. These then have to be attached to an email if you can ever manage to save them correctly.

Presumably that results in far less complaints being logged whilst the ICO's office still receieves the same budget from the government. and so can instead manage to pay their top fat cats larger bonuses, salaries and expense allowances than if they instead had to waste valuable staff bonus spending time actually investigating complaints from the public and taking action against the scammers.:eek::mad::mad::mad:

Mary_Hartnell

My husband managed to keep one of the call centre muppets on the phone for 40 minutes, until he was told to "b*gg*er off.

In spite of being told that we had one old PC (Windows 98 - sometimes still used for word processing applications) in addition to Apple MACs, the muppet pressed on insisting we had a Windows 7 PC with a trojan.

The muppet insisted he was telephoning from "London" and managed to give the address of 18 Woodstock St London W1C 2AL

Good old "streetview" confirmed that this address does exist - it as a red brick building down a road to the south of Oxford Street nominally in Mayfair ! At the time of being captured on film it was offering itself for rent.

If the Old Bill are not prepared to try to interview these people (because I still believe they must have been phoning from abroad) someone at least needs to tell the landlord (and the other tenants?) that their building could be being used for misrepresentation and so getting tainted with a nefarious reputation.

We are of course part of the useless telephone preference service.

Bwy39

gdyr1945 wrote: »

I have drastically reduced the number of unwanted calls ever since I started using my husband's refereeing whistle. I listen for a few minutes to make sure it isn't a call I want and then blow really hard. I have found this far more evective than paying to block calls especially as 'they' can only block calls which are made in UK and most annoying ones come from overseas.

So sorry to say your information is incorrect.
I have a call blocker and this little box blocks all unwanted calls over seas and Skype included.
It also blocks those strange numbers like 011111

LMH67

I purchased a CPR Call blocker and plugged it in a week ago, after being plagued by calls daily for years. Have now cancelled anoymous caller reject with BT so should pay for itself in a few months.

Not a single cold call has got through since installing - I call that a result. And if they did, you can block call by call. An absolute godsend as hubby works nights every other week.

Bought it through Quidco & Ebay with cashback credit card for £39.99, so small amount of cashback and Nectar points. Win, win.

I know some have pooh poohed this item on this website - not entirely sure why unless you are into conspiracy theories - but it does really seem to work.

Sally_A

I've taken to answering the phone in French, and have done so for the past few weeks, my mates all know it's still me - a bit embarrassing when the surgery rang, but they saw the funny side. The random calls from India are definitely on the decline (and yes we are TPS registered).

Must dust of my German next, and when push comes to shove a bit of Welsh, Bora Da, Pontypridd, Abertawe, Llandeilo......it soon makes them hang up. :rotfl:

NonGeographicalMan

For the last couple of years since TalkTalk, Bracken Bay Kitchens and a few others were given big fines for making silent calls or calls to TPS registered homes the only major unwanted calls I was getting were from India. eg Microsoft virus scam, fake market research surveys to get you to agree to receive more unwanted calls or warranty schemes for Sky Digiboxes.

However since the start of this year despite my TPS registration I have been contacted repeatedly by UK based unregulated investment scheme scammers. They not only claim to be in London but quite clearly are British based from their perfect London accents. About five of these people have wanted to try and part me from £5,000 to go in to carbon equity investments, another was promoting a scheme for rare earth metals (£5,000 again being the minimum they were after) and another that has called repeatedly has been plugging investment in fine Bordeaux wine (which they claim is CGT exempt). Several of these UK callers display working UK numbers although some are withheld. With all of them I have strung them along far enough to obtain documentation so I can lodge a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner.

I find it shocking that these UK based firms who are trying to do very large amounts of harm per individual called (i.e. trying to part vulnerable retired and elderly people from many thousands of pounds) are still going on and that Ofcom, ICO, OFT and the Police have not swiftly taken action to shut down these particularly nasty UK based scams. I agree that taking action against overseas cllaers is difficult but UK is not and if they aren't dealing with even these people fast the regulators are clearly failing.

I also had a call from a Gibraltar based bunch of PPI scammers called https://www.aimsreview.com yesterday. They called with an automated call saying you may be missing out on money you are owed and suggesting you press 9 or whatever if interested. I did press 9 just to find out who it was and the caller insisted a colleague call me back. This trout of a thick stupid Northern housewife then blathered on about how I would get thousands of pounds and when I told her that no I wouldn't and they would take most of my money and that I would be far better doing it myself she told me that I was wrong! Then when I challenged her about the TPS she simply tried to duck that one and told me no supervisor was available when I requested speaking to one about where they got my number from.

So straight off to the ICO website to complain about them The ICO has a new online PECR complaint form to fill out. If you are going to make a report make it there as they are now beginning to start prosecuting some of these people after a lot of bad publicity about them previously failing to do so. It is a complete waste of time making a report to the TPS as a report there does not constitute evidence that can be used in court by the ICO to prosecute one of these scammers.

rickbonar.

TPS, Offcom, ICO, etc are worse than useless.

Clearly from all the people writing here they fail to do anything to stop these calls which no one wants.

Quite often the gullible people that fall for some of these scammers lose £s if not thousands of £s.

TPS etc in reality are government funded smokescreens for the MPs to hide behind and tell the public that their concerns and complaints ARE being dealt with and that these official bodies will erase these calls... BUT they do exactly the opposite!


Reminds of Leveson enquiry doesn't it?