Cold callers - why are they allowed?

Herongull

A call screener is the only solution. I bought a Try Call about a year ago and its brilliant!

brewerdave

GingerBob wrote: »

Good advice. For the most part I use bogus phone numbers. Let's face it, most of the organisations we deal with have no need of your phone number, but insist on harvesting it.

...I've found that you can put in a row of 11*0s - all of the comparison sites I've used seem to accept this.:T

yangptangkipperbang

Herongull wrote: »

A call screener is the only solution. I bought a Try Call about a year ago and its brilliant!

All you need is a conventional caller display phone with an answer machine - don't waste money on anything else ! If you don't recognise the number/name shown - just let it go to the answer machine. ALL the cold callers hang up at that point.

Pincher

Blame the people who say YES to cold callers.
It's like heroine, if everyone say no, they will stop.

I want BT to create a feature that people can participate in.

When you get a cold call, you hang up and dial *COLDCALL#, i.e. *26532255#

The BT computer records the caller ID, and if enough people report it, it goes on a black list. BT then blocks calls from the blacklist to all the people who have registered for BT Privacy, aka TPS.

The cold calling company will dump the blacklisted number, which means *COLDCALL# reports will stop, so after a few days, the number can be removed from the blacklist. It will probably be re-allocated to some innocent company, so we need to be careful.

matttye

I just say "no thanks" and then hang up, or sometimes I just hang up.

My colleague says at the start of the call "I'm not going to buy anything but you can talk to me if you like.. I know you're just trying to do your job." I haven't got the patience for that!! Plus, if their job is sales, it'll be a waste of time anyway.

Pincher

matttye wrote: »

My colleague says at the start of the call "I'm not going to buy anything but you can talk to me if you like.. I know you're just trying to do your job."

It's a free resource for lonely people who need to chat.


If we can get BT to do this, it will be two birds with one stone.
People who feel lonely will enable cold calls by dialing *WANTCHAT#, and stop calls by *STOPCHAT#. BT simply diverts calls that would have gone to BT Privacy numbers to the people who actually want to get calls. The recipient needs to lie a little by saying "Yes, that's me." when they ask are you Mr. Smith, so the salemen will continue to talk.