Nuisance Phone Calls

:tap_fingers:Since I have been retired and home alone whilst management is at work the amount of stupid phone calls is getting silly. I have found some of them hang up if you dont speak. I have had three phone calls today,sorry four now, asking for my wife. I got a bit miffed when I was told she must be at home now she is retired.( She retired and returned 3 days a week.) I have resorted to giving my mobile number to anyone I want to speak to. All I ask is let me have my days alone in peace to plan our trips away and some shed time. Its not a lot to ask is it.

I'm with BT, have been for years, their recently introduced call handling system is great.

Can block all withheld numbers, unless you specify a particular number you want to call you, can immediately block any number that does get through.

It takes awhile to 'kick in' but since we've been using it (about two or three months) the amount of nuisance calls we get has reduced quite a bit.

 I will discuss this with management, I dont make complicated choices any more. Maybe I could block the calls from her sister in Australia.

My partner refuses the call handling system partly as our doctors ring on an anonymous number. 

I do get fed up with the number of calls I get too. Most recently HMRC have taken to calling me with a recorded message. I have also had many calls from the Microsoft support team. Obviously I ignored them all.

If somebody says this will only take 5 minutes I take great delight in answering slowly while watching the clock and a 4 minutes, 50 seconds saying "times up" and putting the phone down. It's the simple pleasures that keep me entertained.

Oops, double post.

We have a BT8610, brilliant!! Any one calling but withholding their number has to state who they are, you then get a choice whether to answer or not. We have had it for about 6 months and have not had a single nuisance call. Plenty of missed calls from people who did not want to say who they were.
You can pre program it with numbers who can just ring as normal.

Paul 300358 wrote:We have a BT8610, brilliant!! Any one calling but withholding their number has to state who they are, you then get a choice whether to answer or not. We have had it for about 6 months and have not had a single nuisance call. Plenty of missed calls from people who did not want to say who they were.
You can pre program it with numbers who can just ring as normal.

So have we Paul, and I agree. It works very well.

When you get an announced call, if you are not sure about it you can press 1 which lets the caller through on that occasion only.

If it's someone you know and don't want to block, press 2 and they are let through and permanently added to the "allowed" list. Next time they phone their call comes straight through with no hassle.

We now very rarely get the nuisance calls, often at around tea time. The phone stores the missed cals so you can review them if you wish, to see if it has blocked anyone you may have wanted to speak to.

A vote for the BT 1572 system whereby you can create your own blacklist and share the benefits of other peoples. Since signing up to it my nuisance calls have pretty much stopped.

We just have caller display. Plus I've set the phone to give a jaunty warble when friends in the phone's memory call, a rather less jaunty tone from family, and the normal ring if the call is unknown. We never pick up when it's the normal ring tone, it goes to the answer phone.
Al.

We've never, ever had one nuisance phone call.

Years ago we had a "cherished" number which we kept. It's completely different from other numbers in the county and so never figures on cold call lists or automatic dialling.

Whenever we are asked for a phone number we give it but with 2 or 3 numbers transposed so it can't be used. Only family or trusted people have our number so, if we did get a cold call, it would be easy to trace who gave it to the company calling.

The last thing I want is the "Block All Unidentified Callers" option because BOTH of our mobile phones are "Identity Blocked".  This is to reduce the chance of nuisance calls on our mobile phones when we are away from home and incurring charges to receive calls; but it also means that we can't call home from the mobiles if we have the "BAUC" facility.

Good old TalkTalk have put the "Block All Unidentified Callers" option on my home phone on TWO occasions without me asking and I have only discovered this when (like ET) I've tried to call home.

Frustrated by their latest I phoned TalkTalk only last week and surprise, surprise, I was told that I could block the last caller by tapping in


Apparently this action blocks just the last caller and not all unidentified callers.

I've yet to use the system so how true this is I don't know.  Sorry.

Hope this helps.

Looks like I am going to repeat the others but the best £65 I have ever spent was on our BT8500 (3 phones & Base) We have had our tea in peace since we bought a few years ago and now have zero junk calls. If in doubt it has a call vetting system to decide if it will ask you if you wish to accept the call

If i'm in a '* Inappropriate Word *' mode, I'll say 'hello', & if Mr cold-caller starts his spiel, I'll again say 'hellooo', while he's still talking,  then he starts again,  & just carry on over & over as if there's a problem with the line & he can't be heard. Sometimes, I've managed to drag this on for quite a while, but then unfortunately, they hang up. 
I then put the handset down with a self-satisfied, smug grin.   

Another one that always works is, 'Sorry, i'm busy at the moment, give me your number & i'll call you back in a couple of minutes'.  But they don't for some reason!!

Interesting twist on the nuisance phone call front. I’ve been looking at changing our broadband provider and checked out all the usual suspects on comparison sites and on each of those belonging to the ones that I wanted more information from. On Virgin, they asked for my postcode and house number to “check internet speeds”, no problem thinks I, we’re ex-directory and we’ve had no connection with them so they can’t do more than email me. How wrong was I, next day a cheery and persistent chap from Virgin offices, Manchester called our landline, addresses me by name and asks if I’m ready to sign up   

Although my only interest is broadband, he regaled me with TV packages at 100mph. It took me a little while to explain to him that his call was not welcome and he seemed to have some difficulty understanding why I didn’t want to arrange a date for him to call back or an engineer to visit to “assess our needs”. 

Before his call, Virgin were at the top of our consideration list, today they are not on the list at all  

I take the call, ask them to hang on and then leave the handset by a radio. Don't know how long it takes them to twig 

I also have the numbers from Talktalk which bans unwanted callers, think they have got the message, no unwanted calls for a while now,    you see I will get one now. for saying that.

Bought these a few weeks ago (cheaper then):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BT-Advanced-Blocker-Cordless-Machine/dp/B01BWMWTJY?th=1

Surprising the number of calls that just hang up!!

PB

Answering the phone in Welsh usually baffles the unknown caller. They then get frustrated. Some shout. One told me to F Off and hung up. By I don't - I leave the phone of the hook until the scrambler starts to screech. I hope that's a retaliatory nuisance...!

Cymro, you can leave the phone off all night , as they called you, they control the call. They can redial immediately for their next victim. Once the exchange detects your phone off the hook but not in the process of dialling it applies the howler to warn you that phone is off hook. But I do like you answering in Welsh.
           I was sitting in the middle of a technical course last week when the lecturer received a similar call from a Sanjeeve who was concerned that he had a security issue with his computer and  wanted  to fix a problem with his computer. He put the call on the amplifier so we could all hear and then led poor Sanjeeve a merry dance for over 5 minutes while he was asked to give him passwords and allow HIM to take over his computer to fix a windows security issue . When we finally all spoke up and wished him a happy new year he told us to f off and hung up too!

Wonderful, Kaspian!

Thanks for enlightening me about leaving my phone off the hook. Pity!

Cymro

This thread must have triggered something in the ether as I have had two 'we have been advised you have had an accident' calls. After asking them to tell me when it was 'as they had been advised then they must know' which led to a tirade of questions about said accident which I keep reverting to 'tell me when it was then' they hung up 

As with the computer calls, I usually just say, "which one?".

meanchris wrote:As with the computer calls, I usually just say, "which one?".

I told one caller, in a very distressed voice, that I have 9 computers running various versions of Windows, and begged him to help me find out which one was causing the problem that he was ringing me about.

I was bored.

I have said that I do not have a computer, end of.