Is there anything my parents can do about these phone calls

[StealthPolarBear]

They get spam/con phone calls three or four times a day. Some are international numbers which they ignore but some aren't, and some are even local numbers. They are on the TPS. the only possible reason I can think of is they've had their number a very long time but it's driving my mum spare.

I dont know on a practical level but they can certainly mess with them if they are of a mind to.

Sing down the phone
Pretend to be a doddery old person and keep saying "What, dear? You've got a fish hand? Oh I've never heard of that dear, you should see a doctor..." etc
Tell them to fuck off
Give bogus answers
Pretend the doorbell just went and put the phone in and leave it.
Heavy breathe (if it's a man on the other end).
Repeat everything they say back to them as a question.

Etc

My dad did this for a bit and they stopped ringing eventually. I reckon he's on an "Don't bother with this time wasting, annoying prick" list somewhere but he doesn't care.

Have they looked into what facilities / help their phone provider offers for this? It varies.

Have they caller display? Can they bar particular numbers?

And do they always tick the 'don't contact me' box, or are they of the type to sign up to all sorts?

They need to learn how to be impolite.

Get a tru call phone. You can set it so all numbers not on your contact list (there are other variables too) have to announce themselves before the phone will ring. You can then choose to accept the call, block the call or send it to answer phone. The scammers/spammers don't usually get that far, and it stops automated calls because the caller has to press the hash key before announcing themselves.

The 'BT Advance' phones have this tech; google 'tru call' for other options.

Look into BT callminder. I'm not usually a BT fan, but I think this will help.

Contact your local Trading Standards, esp if parents are getting on (don't mean to sound rude) In my area, they offer devices for the phone which blocks unwanted callers. You can also buy them yourself. I screens calls asking the caller to voice who they are, so they can choose whether to answer or not

Sky or Talk Talk customers can have a feature where they add known numbers to a safe list.

Id do this ASAP before they get scammed by a Bank or BT impersonator.

Yep - Tru call. I couldn't remember what it was called

A friend of mine asks who they're calling and when they say (including when it's for her) she says that she's very very sorry, but whoever it is prison. They soon lose interest.

I have my landline on permanent do not disturb and have made all my contacts VIPs so they can get through, this is with BT

Get a BT phone with Call Guardian on it. You can whitelist VIP numbers so they all get through straight away. Everything else is screened and callers have to speak to get through so it blocks automated spam calls. If they don't want to speak to the caller it will direct calls straight to the answer machine and you can block numbers with the press of a button.

Best £85 I've ever spent.

My mum has a call blocker and it works. Worth the money.

Best £85 I've ever spent.

Second this. Well worth the money.

I assume they have caller id? Are they answering all calls even when they don't recognise the number?

If they have Sky their screening service is free. I never get that kind of call now.

Tha k you all. I wasn't aware of whitelists so will look into that. They also have sky.
They block numbers as they can but they're all different. Some are automated messages.
They don't answer if possible but they hadc a local number call during a time when my grandad was in hospital.
I will look into some of these. Brilliant thanks

Oh and just the phone ringing annoys them as they have to drop what they're doing and go and look at the number.

When you say have sky, do you mean for a land-line (excuse my ignorance). They have a bt phone but have sky TV.

My parents have the BT phones and they found it worked instantly. They have it set up so that unknown callers have to tell the machine who they are before the phone even rings. When the phone rings you get the message and can choose to accept the call or not. Normal genuine people are quite happy to say ‘hi it’s Steve’ or ‘this is Pat calling from the doctors’ but scammers won’t do it and just hang up. Because it intercepts the call and asks for a name before the phone even rings you’ll never know you had a call until you check the handset.

I had spafe designs call me every month for 8 years telling me I had won a kitchen even when they changed there name they called me the call handlers would say sorry we wont call again but the following month they did it was baffling because it was a council house I didnt own it the only way I stopped them was changing my number

Ooh. What's thst service called then?

Yes, only if you have calls via Sky, sorry.

Call blocking phones OP, 99.9999% effective. I have BT but Argos sell a number of different models.

I get about one call in error these days every Three months and that is usually someone genuinely dialling by
Mistake and
Not a sales call

I dunno how we've managed it but we practically never get any calls like this. It's a BT landline, ex-directory and we registered with TPS years ago.

Perhaps it's just luck.