To ask a caller to hold, and then leave the phone in a drawer?

[ElizaPickford]

It's one of these fuckers calling from India to tell me that my computer is broken and they'd like to fix it. I get about 8 of these a day and it's really starting to piss me off, I'm so bored of breaking off what I'm doing to find it's these bastard scammers.

So I played along for 5 mins, asked her to hold and then left her in the kitchen drawer. About 3 hours ago. It has stopped any other idiots phoning in the last 3 hours.

I guess what I want to know, is will this be causing them a huge inconvenience, me leaving the line open? I like to think of her desperately trying to get an outside line to defraud some gullible old lady, but still hearing my kitchen drawer, but I'm not sure if phone lines still work that way?

[threegoingonthirty]

The line will go dead when the person who initiated the call hangs up , so you'll probably only waste five minutes while they wait for you - but still worth doing! I do the same.

[ElizaPickford]

Oh bugger, that's annoying. I suppose at least it's meant 3 quiet hours.

I don't know what to do about them, I work from home and they're really annoying - but with them calling from overseas they seem to bypass TPS and the settings I have on the phone itself to block certain numbers.

Total bloody scumbags.

[cozietoesie]

They tried me a few weeks ago and I was laughing so hard that the guy put the phone down.

Maybe they've simply marked my number as 'round the twist' but they haven't phoned back.

[cleanmyhouse]

The last one of those i got ended badly. I went along with it for 5 minutes before bursting out with "how do you sleep at night? You're a fucking disgrace! Never call me again you fucking criminal" and hanging up.

He called me back immediately and i told him to fuck off and never call again. He told me he and his colleagues would be calling me every half hour from then on.

They didn't, but I found it a bit creepy.

[BaronessEllaSaturday]

I have most of the computers in the house running windows which I conveniently forget but one runs Unix and works on Ubuntu so I throw them by asking why on earth Microsoft are ringing for a computer that runs Ubuntu, always throws them because they don't know what the hell I'm talking about but realise I do.

[ProfessorPickles]

I got one from a man saying "I'm calling about your recent car crash" trying to convince me I had been!

[MyCarHasBrokenDownAgain]

Ooh I love the car crash ones! I've manged to get two of them to tell me to fuck off! And then there was the poor guy who DID answer all my questions regarding the 'accident' ...who I then had to apologise to as he'd got a wrong number and wasn't trying to scam me LOL!

[BuzzardBird]

I told all of them that I don't own a computer/car/worked in a factory/or I am dead.

For some reason I don't get any anymore

[LurkingHusband]

I'd love to set up a service: "ScamExchange". Free to subscribe. When you get an unwanted cold caller, you press "#SCAM" and it transfers the call to ScamExchange, to be connected with another random cold caller who another ScamExchange subscriber had dropped into the exchange.

The whole thing could be funded by charging people to listen to cold callers scamming each other.

What's the email address for Dragons Den ?

[Nolim]

For spam callers i used to turn on the radio and put the receiver next go the very loud speaker. I would try to find the most annoying station but you never know, maybe they liked it.

[IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou]

I normally say "thank god, I was worried that I might have PPI I'm owed - let me get the paperwork" and then chuck the phone on the bed & get back to work....

[WeeMadArthur]

I had one yesterday, probably the least professional one I've ever had, he just asked "do you know anyone who has had an accident?" And then didn't know what to do when I said no!

[Icimoi]

LurkingHusband, I want shares in your new company!

[Icimoi]

WeeMadArthur, you should have got their hopes up by inventing an accident involving a coachload of your relatives and going through each and every one of them with tedious fictional detail of their names, ages, addresses and bizarre injuries.

[deedee33]

Love lurking's idea! I went ex directory (even though I wfh) which helped a lot (clients can still find me perfectly easily mostly email anyway) - caller display also invaluable including for dSis if i don't feel like listening for half an hour

Usually international or out of area.

Some do sneak through still, I usually say 'no you're not' or 'don't be silly'.

[dingit]

I had a door to door salesman and I told him I was just the cleaner. ( well I am)

[LurkingHusband]

How does this KickStarter thing work

[mrsnlw2012]

sign up to that call preference service. We've had 1 call in 6m. IL's get approx 10 a day!

[mrsnlw2012]

My mum once had one calling up to say "We're calling to hep clear your debt" She has none. The man was alarmed she didnt have finance on a car, a mortgage, credit cards, loans and once his list was exhausted congratulated her on her excellent finance skills! LOL!

[Charlotte3333]

We get dozens of the buggers phoning, I often hand the phone to the 4 year old and ask him to sing his christmas songs. He obliges because he loves an audience, and the caller inevitably spends 14 minutes listening to Johnny Mathis' christmas gold and asking "please may I speak to your Mummy now" as DS2 shouts "I am not finished, you must listen" as he launches into When A Child Is Born.

I once had a company phone every day for over a month, and took to announcing "Charlotte is dead, can I help at all?", "Charlotte is drunk and incapable, can I put you on to the dog?", "Charlotte has gone to prison after murdering her husband, can I help at all?", "I'm sorry, there's never been a Charlotte here, can I ask where you got the name?", "Sorry, Charlotte has been elected Queen of England, you can reach her if you phone Buckingham Palace and ask for her there". It took weeks before they realised I wasn't going to answer their idiotic surveys.

[vvviola]

DH likes to ask the computer ones increasingly technical questions (he works from home in IT). They always hang up on him

and then he bugs me at work by ringing me to tell me all about it

[mrsfuzzy]

i had someone phone me to ask about my 'car accident' recently, i curtly replied 'do i look like the type to be in a high speed car chase ??' silence on end of phone before hanging up ! these people are so daft.

[Housemum]

TPS only works for marketing not market research (hence the "I'm not selling anything just conducting a survey") and the company has to be UK based. So i no longer get calls from double glazing salesman etc but I still get the "I am from Microsoft" calls.

I had an accident call the other day, as I have never claimed on my car insurance and haven't had an accident, I asked him to tell me the details - "I can't do that madam". I said that he had called me, and I was scared that someone was making fraudulent claims in my name - he actually told me that my insurance company were fraudsters as they had given the info!

I sometimes string them along - the dotty old lady one confuses them. They ask me to turn on the PC, I say I need to get my bus pass. "no madam, your computer". I mumble and fumble in a bag, say that's what I'm trying to do, I need the bus pass. Eventually I say that I use the one at the library, do you want me to go there now? Total confusion and hung up...

[Housemum]

I haven't yet tried one that I heard of )possibly on here) - "ok, I'm just up a ladder painting at the moment, let me get dow- aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh" (drop phone)!

[Andrewofgg]

If you did not read threads like this you would imagine MN to be full of lovely people . . .

One moment please, the kettle is about to boil.

Wait about thirty seconds.

I have now phoned my office on the mobile, it is the International Fraud Investigation Division of OFTEL, we can have any call traced in ninety seconds and the phone blocked a minute later, if it's not in the UK we can block it from phoning any UK number, do you wish to proceed with this call?

They don't.