BT Call blocking phones

Abbey1991

Thank you.

I understand that the "voice challenge" requires the caller to press * or #

Is there any scenario where a genuine caller would be unable to do this? eg old-fashioned phones in this country, old payphones in developing countries, or those foreign callshop/cybercaf! places. (I'm thinking maybe in case a friend/relative in difficulty abroad is trying to call me).

Am also nervous that doctors / pharmacists / police stations / hospitals might be put off by the "voice challenge" because they don't understand what's going on.

jeff_chandler

Every day we get calls from call centres, probably India or other Asian countries. When I pick up the phone they always ask for myself. I always cut them off before they begin to say what they have to say.
Today I have received three calls so far and it hasn't reached 4 pm. The last one again asked for myself, I replied by saying who wants to know? this seemed to have baffled him who again asked for myself. I started to lose my temper and told him to "do one" in an unmannered fashion.
I have been on to BT and explained to them why am I constantly receiving calls as such. The gave me a link to a form which apparently stops unwanted calls. So far it hasn't worked.
Is anyone else in this situation and what is there we can do to prevent these in future. These calls are to my landline.

Kind regards Jeff

Wookey

jeff_chandler wrote: »

Every day we get calls from call centres, probably India or other Asian countries. When I pick up the phone they always ask for myself. I always cut them off before they begin to say what they have to say.
Today I have received three calls so far and it hasn't reached 4 pm. The last one again asked for myself, I replied by saying who wants to know? this seemed to have baffled him who again asked for myself. I started to lose my temper and told him to "do one" in an unmannered fashion.
I have been on to BT and explained to them why am I constantly receiving calls as such. The gave me a link to a form which apparently stops unwanted calls. So far it hasn't worked.
Is anyone else in this situation and what is there we can do to prevent these in future. These calls are to my landline.

Kind regards Jeff

The basic BT 8500 phone will let you block these calls as they appear. The Truecall box which is a bit dearer and is what the 8500 bases itself on does quite a bit more for the extra £30 or so, in that it can act as an answer machine with remote access, record phone calls, block numbers or on its highest security setting only allow numbers on a trusted callers list to get thru and the likes of doctor/hospital would need a pin number in advance to get thru to you. It also creates a logfile which can be remotely viewed on a pc and if a prosecution where to be made against a company or individual this is then usable as evidence. Comes down to if you want to spend £80 or £110 or thereabouts to block calls.

anaita

how can we stop companys calling you constantly on my mobile, saying that you had a accident recently as I had won four years ago.when I go on the websites to find the cheap deals for car insurance they say if you have had a accident in the last five years, you have to be true full with them .I am now getting around two calls in around a month. I block these numbers but I get more coming in.

worried_jim

I got rid of my landline last year, oh the joy of peace and quiet!

littleboo

In all probability, they have no idea whether you've had an accident or not. In my experience, if you ask them to tell you the details, they don't know.

Ian011

anaita wrote: »

how can we stop companies calling you constantly on my mobile, saying that you had a accident recently as I had won four years ago. When I go on the websites to find the cheap deals for car insurance they say if you have had a accident in the last five years, you have to be true full with them .I am now getting around two calls in around a month. I block these numbers but I get more coming in.

The facilities available in the trueCall call-blocker boxes are also available to be deployed directly on the telephone network itself.

Sky has deployed similar technology on their landline network under the Sky Shield brand.

The day cannot be far away when mobile providers deploy this technology directly on their mobile networks. Indeed, it seems crazy that none has yet done so.

JohnB47

Wookey wrote: »

Every day we get calls from call centres, probably India or other Asian countries. When I pick up the phone they always ask for myself. I always cut them off before they begin to say what they have to say.
Today I have received three calls so far and it hasn't reached 4 pm. The last one again asked for myself, I replied by saying who wants to know? this seemed to have baffled him who again asked for myself. I started to lose my temper and told him to "do one" in an unmannered fashion.
I have been on to BT and explained to them why am I constantly receiving calls as such. The gave me a link to a form which apparently stops unwanted calls. So far it hasn't worked.
Is anyone else in this situation and what is there we can do to prevent these in future. These calls are to my landline.

I have a BT8500 phone with answer machine. I've found that I don't need to actually block calls. The people you complain about are often at the other end of a computer. The computer calls you, then when you answer, it puts you straight through to the scammer. The announcement, that the BT8500 makes first to callers, seems to confuse the computer and of course it can't say who's calling and press # so the call simply isn't put through.

I've had my BT8500 for about three or four years now and honestly, I haven't had one unwanted call. Absolutely zero. That's without doing anything other than put my friends and families numbers in the phones memory, so that they get straight through.

Doctors surgeries and dentists get through OK - they seem to be well aware of this type of system now.

Ian011

The trueCall plug-in box, handsets based on the trueCall system, and systems offering trueCall-type functionality built in to the telephone network itself, are the only ones that are truly effective. This is because they offer a verbal challenge to unknown callers. Automated systems can't get past it. Scammers decline to engage with it.

Systems based solely on detecting CLI are completely ineffective not least because scammers have learned to change the displayed number on a regular basis. If you simply block all unknown callers you will also be blocking a number of calls that you did want to receive.

choille

Keep getting scam calls from heavily accented Indian? people pretending to be from BT about our internet.

Phoned BT and they say that they will sell me a phone for £40 that will stop it. I said that I don't really think that is reasonable and they should be concerned that someone is pretending to represent them for fraudulent purposes. They eventually said they could put the number on a black list but it wouldn't stop it happening as they can't block it at our exchange as the calls are from overseas.

They also wanted me to re sign a contract with BT as they will start charging me £1.75 a month for caller display if I don't.

My partner is semi disabled and he keeps going to answer the phone and it is this type of call - it's stepped up an incredible pace this last few days and is happening all the time.

It seems that fraud pays and BT are making money from scam callers.