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Unwanted junk mail, calls and faxes discussion area

MSE_Martin
MSE_Martin Posts: 8,272 Money Saving Expert
Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
This discussion relates to the Special briefing: Stop unwanted junk mail, calls and faxes article.

Click reply to ask questions and discuss.
Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert.
Please note, answers don't constitute financial advice, it is based on generalised journalistic research. Always ensure any decision is made with regards to your own individual circumstance.
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Comments

  • In fact the longest ever 0% balance transfer card (18 months) was a direct mail offer. This means, if you can stand it, you may be better off allowing junk mail and skim reading to sort the wheat from the chaff.

    Perhaps that is why Money Saving Expert is so handy - acting as a buffer between the bargains and the junk mail !

    I also must say that I hate the build up of so much paper flooding through the door if you don't use mpsonline. However, it would be really nice if some of these companies organised themselves into trades - eg furniture eg diy and housebuilding eg gardens etc. Then they could produce a short multi-company newletter for lets say gardening enthusiasts, and people could receive a weekly gardening newsletter with links to gardening articles and special offers etc. That way you could look at information that you wanted to without being bombarded with sackfulls of rubish that you didn't want.

    And finally, I have to say that very occasionally you might find something of interest that drops through the letterbox. However, you don't want it now, but might do later. Thus you end up storing folders of cuttings and leaflets which can be a really bad idea. Such articles can be kept more easily and in a tidy fashion on a computer. Do these people have so little imagination when it comes to marketing?
    [ Eat, Drink and be Merry - for tomorrow we get the bill ]
  • D.A.
    D.A. Posts: 1,160 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I signed up to both the MPS and TPS a few months back, and they've worked pretty well so far. Apart from a couple of those annoying "this is Santa, you've won a trip to Florida" calls (which I have reported) the only company now calling us EVERY SINGLE DAY is - guess who - FLIPPIN' BT!!!! And we are with Onetel, so this is obviously a BT sales call. If the biggest telecoms company in the country completely ignores the TPS, what chance do we have of getting rid of this nuisance?
  • Glad
    Glad Posts: 18,903 Senior Ambassador
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Mortgage-free Glee! Name Dropper
    Also Martin can I just add that it is now illegal for companies to text any individual who has indicated they don’t want the texts.
    If you are receiving premium rate text messages, typically costing £1.50 per message, then there is now a universal command to stop them. Simply text back to the 4 or 5 digit number with just the word STOP
    I am a Senior Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Wales, Small Biz MoneySaving, In My Home (includes DIY) MoneySaving, and Old style MoneySaving boards. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.
  • Many of these recorded scam messages are sent out by computer systems which randomly generate the phone numbers to call up, no check is therefore made as to registration with the Telephone Preference Service, so they by-pass TPS and also ex-d numbers. So TPS does not work for these.

    It is possible to get the ones which originate in the UK blocked by phoning "Silent Call Guard" - guess what (?) it's an 0870 number although they claim it's a free service!! (maybe someone can get hold of the 01... number and post it to saynoto0870.com)

    The number is 0870 444 3969 - I understand that you talk to a real person and that the call is quite short.
  • I have received exactly the same "you've won a prize" calls where they sound as if they are giving you an address and then change their mind to give you a scam rate phone number instead. (And that's why I have been getting calls where they hang up when you answer...thought it was just some hoax caller or a very rude person)

    I registered with the telephone preference thing about 2 weeks ago after getting up to 6 calls a day from Toucan telecom - weekends, bank holidays, evenings, daytime - what the *&^% is their problem!?

    Anyway, hopefully I will be left to eat my dinner in peace now. :)
    "The happiest of people don't necessarily have the
    best of everything; they just make the best
    of everything that comes along their way."
    -- Author Unknown --
  • mary
    mary Posts: 1,585 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Martin,

    Is there anything I can do to prevent unwanted emails coming. We block the sender, but they keep changing the name of the sender, so you can never block the world's population individually. In particular the format is - I've been widowed (Suhar Arafat) and left a large amount of money in a bank account in X, I need your help , please send me your financial details etc.
    Of course we never do, but many of these emails have a Nigerian base - similar story, someone widowed, left on their home, a fortune languishing in the vaults of some European bank account, you can get a part of it etc.
    That's the one variety and the other are along the lines of how "viagra" works wonders!
    Is there a central place where you can block such emails, such as the MPS?
  • juno
    juno Posts: 6,553 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Since we registed with TPS, we've actually had more junk calls!
    Murphy's No More Pies Club #209

    Total debt [STRIKE]£4578.27[/STRIKE] £0.00 :j
    100% paid off :j

  • I have been registered with TPS and MPS for getting on for a year.
    I am still plagued by junk mail, but more especially by telephone callers.

    Many are the auto dialled 'You've won the moon please bring crackers for the green cheese' variety and want me to ring their 0908 number. (I have my phone blocked to prevent any chance of any 0900 number being dialled from it, BT can do this for you)..

    However many others are clearly sales calls, from 'real people' and despite the false names they invent, most if not all are originating from the Asian Sub Continent.

    I have started to record each call and send an email to TPS each time I get one, in the hope they might do something, but my experience of their service thus far is 'Good idea, dubious value'.

    I ask for (insist on) the name of the caller and the number they are calling from, which of course brings on near apoplexy in them. They won't give a number or they try to say 0845.. or 0870, which gets them shot down in flames. Dialling 1471 only reveals the 'We do not have the callers number' response.

    I finish by saying I have made a formal complaint about these calls and that I demand they remove my telephone number from their database.

    Probably doesn't do much good but makes me feel better.

    The worst offenders on this are Tele2 and One Tel.

    On the subject of mail, why when I am signed up to MPS, does my postman do unaddressed junk maildrops, each Monday? How can you stop them?

    So my suggestion is make a nuisance of yourself and report everything back to TPS, plague them, they may actually get sick and do something?
  • tchap
    tchap Posts: 16 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10 Posts Combo Breaker
    I have found that if a company sending Junk snail mail does not remove me from their list the first time I wait till the next load from some one else and send that to them. It works most of the time for me
  • I use spamihilator https://www.spamihilator.com it is free software to eradicate spam email. It work only with POP3email access i.e you have to download email into your computer and it will filter it. Forgot to tell you that since it use baesian filter you have to traine it at least for week. That should solve the problem.
    mary wrote:
    Martin,

    Is there anything I can do to prevent unwanted emails coming. We block the sender, but they keep changing the name of the sender, so you can never block the world's population individually. In particular the format is - I've been widowed (Suhar Arafat) and left a large amount of money in a bank account in X, I need your help , please send me your financial details etc.
    Of course we never do, but many of these emails have a Nigerian base - similar story, someone widowed, left on their home, a fortune languishing in the vaults of some European bank account, you can get a part of it etc.
    That's the one variety and the other are along the lines of how "viagra" works wonders!
    Is there a central place where you can block such emails, such as the MPS?
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