Receiving abusive calls (on NTL landline)

MrPayless

What should we do? Had a series of calls from someone who has been abusive but knows a lot about the family to rule out that they randomly targetted us. Cant be a friend messing around as they are quite nasty.

What can NTL do? Can they trace the call?? Will they tell us who it was? What if it was from abroad?

Distressed

asharon

Make a log of all the calls and contact the police. What you could do if you wanted to stop them is phone your phone company and say that you do not want any calls that come from people who withold their muber, or buy a box off ebay that shows the number and don't answer them. I know you can do these through BT. But don't ignore it go and get advice. Try CAB but no one should have to put up with this.

gizmoleeds

The police can trace calls like this - telephone harrasment is a serious crime and they will take you seriously. Also, why not get a device to attach to the phone so you can record the calls (or just use a tape recorder and hold the mic near the phone speaker).

ginger_nuts

NTL should be able to trace the calls .And they will get the police involved .you probably wont be told who called unless they decide to take it to court .
The next time they call you could always say the call is being traced By the police that alone might stop it ,but you still wont no who called .

ben500

NTL are rubbish in this situation I have found, the way I see it the caller is relying on anonimity as a weapon to intimidate you, take away that anonimity and the tables will be turned instantly, what you could do is record the calls and play them back several times, the caller WILL give their identity away sooner or later especially if it is someone familiar to you, you say not a friend as the calls are too abusive, do you count work colleagues amongst these friends as it can be a risky busines to do so, also if a friend was to carry out such an act the chances are that the calls WOULD be more abusive in order to throw you off the scent so to speak, it's difficult to judge as only you know just how personal the information used is and how intimate somebody would have to be with your household or lifestyle to obtain such information, try to think less about the content of the call than the possible method in which the information may have been obtained, take a step back and look at the situation from an outsiders point of view and not an emotional one, you should definately call the police as it has obviously intimidated you, let them get on and do their thing but at the same time remembering that you or one of your family are the most likely ones to identify the individual, if you have discussed it with members of your family you may try letting them listen to the tapes, someone may recognise a particular turn of phrase or reference and bingo it can be as easy as that be as obsessive as you can about dealing with the cause and the intimidation will evaporate your subconsious self will kick into attack mode rather than defence.

MrPayless

thanks all - really good advice from all.

bunking_off

Coming at this from a phone company perspective, your first port of call should be the police. Once they're involved, we can do all sorts of things like intercepting calls & tracing the origin (regardless of whether the number's withheld) - however, standard policy with most companies is that we won't do so without police involvement.

knuckledragger

MrPayless,
I'm assuming that the calls are coming from a caller who has witheld their number as opposed to using payphones. A few years ago I had a similar thing with NTL. They gave me a code to bar incoming calls where the caller had witheld their number. It was something along the lines of Type *69 into the phone keypad to put the bar on and #69 to take it off. After a few weeks I took the bar off and had no further problems.