Dealing with Cold Callers + phone

Pollycat

Jo_F wrote: »

I have asked them politely, many times not to call me again, how many times do I need to be polite to these people when they blatantly ignore me?

Might be helpful if you answered my question.....
DOES IT WORK?
Obviously not if you have told them 'many times'.

Pollycat wrote: »

So arguing with them, telling them they are liars, being sarcastic etc - really works?
Do they really stop calling you?

I'm asking a genuine question here as I don't get calls from telephone companies or people pretending to work for telephone companies and I find MY method


works on the few calls I do have.

Are you a customer of Orange?

Jo_F

When I ask them politely not to call me again, it doesn't work, they get huffy and hang up on me, then call again the next day.

I am an Orange customer, though the account is not in my name, Orange have confirmed that it is not them calling me, but they can't do anything else, unless of course I want to change my number, which I don't.

They (the ones that won't leave me alone) always want to know if I have had my free upgrade, and to confirm my post code and address, which is not the same as the 'real' account details. As soon as I challenge them, or ask to speak to a manager they hang up.

danothy

I have taken to asking deeply personal questions of nuisance callers, things like "describe in detail your most recent sexual experience".

Can't say it prevents recurrence but it does bring the current call to a halt quite quickly. Works on chuggers too.

narabanekeater

I tell them I shall just get my DH then pass the phone onto my just turned 3 year old telling him ins either Santa or Bob the builder. He does love singing Bob the builder and chatting to total strangers
One really funny time we had guests so put the phone on loud speaker. We havent laughed so much since

dizziblonde

I had to change our number - a previous owner had got it on every single calling database going by the sounds of it, they'd never ever take "there's no one of that name living here, please remove this number from your records and stop calling us" and the same people would call day in day out - starting at about 9am, going to about 9pm. TPS and the like had done nothing to stop it - and they were often incredibly rude when you asked them to cease calling - I hit the end of my tether about it.

Pollycat

Jo_F wrote: »

When I ask them politely not to call me again, it doesn't work, they get huffy and hang up on me, then call again the next day.

I am an Orange customer, though the account is not in my name, Orange have confirmed that it is not them calling me, but they can't do anything else, unless of course I want to change my number, which I don't.

They (the ones that won't leave me alone) always want to know if I have had my free upgrade, and to confirm my post code and address, which is not the same as the 'real' account details. As soon as I challenge them, or ask to speak to a manager they hang up.

I think we're talking about different types of calls here.

I get the odd one usually from companies doing market research who want me to 'spend a few minutes of my time....'.

A simple 'sorry, not interested' or 'No thanks' works for me.

It sound like you are being harrassed by this company if they are phoning daily despite being told not to.

Ladyhawk

I just cut them off immediately by saying I am on telephone preference and to not call me again, the put the phone down.

davidlizard

We get so many of them these days we simply use the answer phone to screen out the sales calls - the answerphone message invites the person to talk and we pick it up if we want to talk to them. It also means we do not need to talk to friends and relatives if we don't want to - e.g. eating our dinner or putting the kids to bed.

We are TPS registered but it is fairly toothless and these companies know it - the number of companies prosecuted last year for making unwanted sales calls was zero.

vikingaero

The point is either to have fun and wind them up or put the phone down. Every second you leave them hanging on means it costs them money and is a social service in preventing them from calling other people.

"But would you rather these people were on the dole?"

Actually yes. For the majority of people, these jobs never last more than a couple of weeks/months. In that time they will have screwed up your benefits claims and you really would have been better off claiming jobseekers and ignoring all these pestering jobs (utility sales, double glazing sales etc).

If you ask the agent to remove your number from their list then the majority of the time they won't. Then you'll receive another call from someone else within the organisation.

ukjoel

jess1974 wrote: »

I have caller display, its been a godsend, i don't answer any withheld or international numbers, nor do i answer any calls from anyone i don't want to speak to......

Then you had better hope your doctor never needs to get in touch.
Confidentially rules mean that doctors should now all contact you from a witheld number.

Not saying I agree with this but its the way it is unfortunately.