Nuisance Calls

FaceHead

Between 9am and 11am this morning my parents received 14 calls presumed to be nuisance calls. This situation has been ongoing for quite some time, although not quite as acutely as this morning. They are retired, but reasonably savvy so some months ago changed the answerphone: All calls are allowed to go to answerphone, and the caller asked to declare themselves before the phone is picked up. However, having your phone ring and answerphone go off every 10 minutes is very irritating, so the phone has now been unplugged. They are also on the TPS list.  

The caller id shows all today's callers to be different - a range of geographic numbers from around the UK, some 033 numbers, some local numbers very similar to their own number and several UK mobile numbers that are only a digit or two different. Googling the numbers provides no information other than that a handful of other people have searched for these numbers too. 

What can be done about this? I can't imagine the Information Commissioner would act in an individual case like this? Unplugging the phone is providing them some peace but isn't a good long term option as some friends and family do actually call on the landline.

Neil_Jones

Invest in something like a TrueCallBlocker or similar.

pbartlett

You tend to get  lot lot fewer nuisance calls on mobile, so one option would be to ditch the landline altogether and use mobile.

I haven't had a landline for about 8 yrs and have never received a nuisance call!

elsien

Some of these are from abroad but show as UK numbers so there's no comeback on them anyway. I've had a spate lately where the caller display flashes as international for a second then changes to a UK number. Their options are really to either turn the sound off on the phone (rather than unplugging it completely) and check the answerphone at intervals or get one of the call blockers.
They could contact their landline provider for any suggestions they may have, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. 

JJ_Egan

As above multiple spoofed numbers including locals and mobiles .

IC does not act on Foreign call centres and TPS is only of use for genuine UK company's signed up to it .

brewerdave

We find that these nuisance calls go in cycles - I presume that the foreign call centre robot gets to our area code every few weeks then saturates the exchange for a couple of days because we get multiple calls then silence for a few weeks. Never answer unknown/international numbers altho' we are having to answer withheld calls currently as the Drs surgery and covid centres use "withheld"

J_B

Neil_Jones said:

Invest in something like a TrueCallBlocker or similar.

Or perhaps a BT phone (can't remember the model, sorry) which doesn't ring unless the caller is in your address book.

Otherwise, it asks the caller to give their name and press a key to continue.

cajef

J_B said:

Neil_Jones said:

Invest in something like a TrueCallBlocker or similar.

Or perhaps a BT phone (can't remember the model, sorry) 

BT8500 and BT8600, excellent bits of kit never had any unwanted or scam calls since purchasing one. now replaced by several newer models.