British man charges telemarketers to call him


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You know he could of just used this :

We are the Telephone Preference Service

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service. It is the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html

Sign up to it and you WONT get annoying spam phonecalls. Did it for my Mum and my Gran, both say they get 0 calls of this sort now.

So no need to go to the excess he has.

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In the states it got really bad around the early 2000's.  It was so bad that I bought a device to stop it.  Years after that I dropped my landline.

 

I rarely get anything on my phone these days but some wrong numbers (like today) and family/friends.

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Oh, the way to deal with those people, if you have time, is to just string them along and act like you believe it. Pretend to do everything they say, but when they ask if you can see x or y, just say no you see a or b... Really confound the buggers. :p

 

If you -don't- have time, just tell them to f-off and hang up.

such a sadist you are :P

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lol reading the indian scam attempts, about 2 months ago I opened up my new warehouse with a new number and within a day or two received a phone call from a heavy indian accented person who told me my Windows business PC's had viruses on them and were slowing down, sending business packet data out to hackers and such. I didn't even have a computer connected to the internet line at the warehouse.. yet they were magically sending info out to everybody apparently.

 

Like others here I string them along also when I have the time, I want to waste their time and hope others do the same to the point that cold calling is a non-viable option for them and it stops.

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Was thinking about doing this too, but at that rate, you'd only get ?4.20 per hour of your time. I suppose if you've got nothing better to do with your time...

 

Personally, they annoy the hell out of me, so I usually tell them they have gotten through to the local police station. For some reason, they seem to want to get off the line pretty quick after that lol.

 

My mum, on the other hand, loves to sit down and have a chat with them. We do get some good laughs out of it :laugh:

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All my important friends and family have my personal cellphone number. They can get me any time day or night if they need me.

Your cellphone would say "Unknown Caller" if called from a hospital phone just the same. Just based on your comment, you still won't answer for your important friends in that situation because you wouldn't know it is them.

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Your cellphone would say "Unknown Caller" if called from a hospital phone just the same. Just based on your comment, you still won't answer for your important friends in that situation because you wouldn't know it is them.

agreed, I always pick up the phone whichever number it is, if it's a annoying person it's just a matter of hanging up :P

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agreed, I always pick up the phone whichever number it is, if it's a annoying person it's just a matter of hanging up :p

I'm not even sure why those numbers are listed as Unknown Caller. I know you can directly call a doctors office in my local hospital, and if they call you, see there number. For some reason, the "public use" phones show up that way though.

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I'm not even sure why those numbers are listed as Unknown Caller. I know you can directly call a doctors office in my local hospital, and if they call you, see there number. For some reason, the "public use" phones show up that way though.

I guess to prevent abuse, like the police number is called countless times as joke, those hospital numbers which are unkown have atleast not those problems.

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I don't think it should be allowed to withhold your number when calling someone, and it shouldn't be possible to fake it, either.

I never answer 'withheld' or unknown calls.

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A very brilliant move on his part. As for me, I never answer the phone if the caller ID says Unknown Caller or anything like that. I only answer people that I know. :)

 

Risky move. What if your friends and family's mobiles go flat or die or are in a no-signal area and they try to use phone booths or ask someone to use their phone?

 

Do what I do, unplug the phone. All I have on my line is my modem. I can't get rid of my landline until we get NBN in my area so I'm stuck with Telstra who doesn't want to provide naked ADSL.

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We've been getting the spam calls recently from India about how my PC is slow, we had to block overseas numbers because of the amount we were getting, but these VoIP calls slip through.

I don't think it should be allowed to withhold your number when calling someone, and it shouldn't be possible to fake it, either.

There's technical reasons to fake it (A Skype user calling should show the Skype number, not the number of the exchange or whatever where the call enters the telephone network), or stuff like company numbers showing an official support line vs. an internal number.

A end user shouldn't be able to fake that info though.

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Most of the spam callers I get these days are outside the UK, therefore the TPS has no affect on them...

Hmm not here we dont, but maybe different for you.

 

Companies based abroad who call into the UK and who are making calls on behalf of UK based companies, must comply with UK regulations and screen their call lists against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) before making an unsolicited sales and marketing call to a UK telephone number. We do make the file available to overseas based companies under licence for the purpose of suppression so they know whom not to telephone but, many overseas companies who telephone the UK on their own account from overseas do so to avoid legal and self regulatory restrictions.

So yeh not the most ideal situation, but least its a step in the right direction and in most cases will stop a large percentage of calls coming through. No doubt worth doing if you havent already done so. We personally went from 2-3 calls a day after my sister took out a loan to nothing coming through. Same with my gran, she was getting a lot of un-solicated sales calls and to a 90yr old thats just not on. Again went from 4+ calls a day to 0 in a matter of days.

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I've been on the TPS for years.  It works for a while but once it goes, it goes.

 

The problems start if you just ONCE, tell a company you're dealing with that they can contact you.  If you don't read it carefully, you'll often see the part about their partners contacting you. Miss that off ONCE, and you're completely screwed.  The TPS doesn't protect against calls if you've given your permission for contact, and once you've ticked that box, your name will go into lists that get traded between companies all the time.

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I've been on the TPS for years.  It works for a while but once it goes, it goes.

 

The problems start if you just ONCE, tell a company you're dealing with that they can contact you.  If you don't read it carefully, you'll often see the part about their partners contacting you. Miss that off ONCE, and you're completely screwed.  The TPS doesn't protect against calls if you've given your permission for contact, and once you've ticked that box, your name will go into lists that get traded between companies all the time.

Still a 2sec online form once in a while trumps setting up a premium phone line and then baiting the callers when your making profit. Smart hes making money off of them, but dumb that he`s now essentially wasting more of his own time than when the calls began, purely for ?.

Nor is it practical for most folk, i.e older folk, have to say tho my gran when she was alive would of loved the idea of a premium phone line to catch the "shower of bastards" LOL!

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Your cellphone would say "Unknown Caller" if called from a hospital phone just the same. Just based on your comment, you still won't answer for your important friends in that situation because you wouldn't know it is them.

That could happen I suppose, but all my friends have cellphones and call me on that. And there is always text. I might change my mind if something like that does happen to me but until then.....

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