Nuisance calls - does this old trick still work?

WhiteHorse

"Yes I'll just get [whoever they want to talk to], please hold on".

Gently place telephone in rubbish bin. Cover lightly and carry on with whatever you were doing.

DrPaul

Just crawled out from behind the cooker I was cleaning around to answer the phone (expecting a call from my nearest and dearest) to be told that someone had magically found an error on my computer.

That does it! I gave them the usual torrent of abuse and profanity (well it makes me feel slightly better, even if only in the short term) and then headed straight over to Amazon...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000OSKJFY/ref=oss_product

Sounds like a particularly piercing model - just what I was looking for.

desert_rose

I always have my answerphone switched on for incoming land-line calls and it works a treat. Cold callers always hang up when the message on the tape begins to play. You can screen unwanted calls and friends and family know that if they leave a quick message, you'll get back to them.

Worked a treat too when I had a whiny friend who would phone every day with her latest bit of drama and expect me to be on the end of the phone for up to an hour each evening. She'd call. I'd text back.

Sorted.

hcb42

i never get these calls

DrPaul

hcb42 wrote: »

i never get these calls

Then consider yourself very lucky!

DrPaul

desert_rose wrote: »

I always have my answerphone switched on for incoming land-line calls and it works a treat. Cold callers always hang up when the message on the tape begins to play. You can screen unwanted calls and friends and family know that if they leave a quick message, you'll get back to them.

Worked a treat too when I had a whiny friend who would phone every day with her latest bit of drama and expect me to be on the end of the phone for up to an hour each evening. She'd call. I'd text back.

Sorted.

My parents, both in their late 80s, have had to do this - it's a sad day when elderly people are afraid to answer the phone

hcb42

I am with TPS. I have also worked in outsourced call centre management. (not doing dodgy stuff like this I hasten to add)

I believe that as long as the list is cleansed before it is sent to the outsourcer, then by being on the TPS i will have been removed. So in that sense it does stop international call.

Also ex directory, dont know if that helps.

vax2002

I ask them how on earth I can do business with them when they have lied in the five words.
hello My name is Michale, brian, john, dave or whatever.
Now I know lots of Indian men and I have never met one with and English name yet.
as we are doing business, I prefer to do that business with people who don't open the transaction by lying about what they are called.
thanks. goodbye

Dave_C_2

Sigh. This is one of those urban legends. Telephones and exchange systems are designed so that it is impossible to send an acoustic shock (such as some idiot blowing a whistle) over the network.

Think about it, would a phone company leave themselves wide open to law suits for damages to hearing?

Also the resonant frequency bit is so much baloney. A resonant peak right in the frequency range where the phone is made to work? Lost of money is spent so that the response curve is flat.

Boring but true.

MamaMoo_2

My dad always answers the phone with "Swimming pool, deep end" or "Broadmoor prison butchers, you shop 'em we chop 'em", or "Abdul's Indian Resaurant, today's special is phone pest bhuna"

Usually enough to confuse them into hanging up. The more resilient ones are then met with a great Jehova's Witness style "have you heard the word of God" speech.