to think that 'blasting' a whistle, down the phone, into the ear of someone in a call centre is abusive?

[twinklingfairy]

An old school friend has delightedly put this as her status. That her husband had the whistle ready and BLAST = call centre caller with tinitus, lol ??
How is that funny!?
My DH had someone scream into his ear, as a teenager, and has tinitus to this day. That's over 20yrs later!
I wrote a reply giving this story but omitting that it was my DH and was told to , calm down. She has been putting up with the abuse of the constant call for months etc. And that she had suffered it herself, after a rock concert.
hmm not quite the same, I think, as having a high pitch put straight into your ear that could abuse Long Term damage.
But it would seem I am a kill joy
DH says leave it, but I can't help feeling very angry on his behalf. Not to mention the poor soul, though I don't deny the calls are annoying, no one deserves abuse like that when it could cause lasting problems.

carer my parents are in the same situation, even down to the 5/6 number change thing. I keep trying to persuade them to pay the £2 ish a month for caller display but for some reason they seem to prefer getting stressed and angry instead

bogey mine are the same. Its like theyve decided to lay back and accept it.

I've heard that if you sing nursery rhymes down the phone and not talk it stops them calling back. Don't know if this actually works as I never answer my landline! A whistle seems a nasty thing to do.

Say, I'm not interested and put phone down easy. Get TPS. Complain to the actual company if you have a real issue not the teenager on the phone. They can't make any changes anyway.
Most cold callers arnt direct selling anyway its to make appts etc. you'd be surprised how many people do say yes so it's not pointless, companies do make a lot of money from telesales

i have tinnitis. i first noticed it when i was eight before i'd been in contact with any loud noises.

deal with unwanted calls by adopting an 'old lady' voice and keeping them talking about irrelevant things until they put the phone down.

show your friend this

YANBU. The calls are blinking annoying but like anything, you can't just abuse someone for annoying you.

Pseudonym makes a good point.The sound the receiver hears is only what is generated by the loudspeakers in the headset they are using and the employer should ensure they have a maximum decibel level.
I am not sure i believe the German call centre story.Why isn't the woman named?

She wasn't named in the German press but it was reported in Germany including in Frankfurter Allgemeine (equivalent of the Guardian or Times) as well as other 'legal roundup' type sites etc.

these calls are anoying what i tend to do when they ask for me is say sorry she not in can i take a message they say no an thats it.

Yabu.
Although if It's the call centre of a company that I actually deal with I am always polite and nice and wish them well.

However.

I have done everything humanly possible to lessen the likelihood of any form of uninvited communication, from tps to "no cold calling" signs. I do not, however, have caller display as I don't get on with those newfangled phones, and, you know, because a few businesses think they are so fucking entitled, why should I?

Despite all this, I get plagued. Doorsteppers get a chilly smile and have the prominent sign pointed out to them. Despite this they will demand to know WHY I don't want their shitty broadband. "because I would touch it with yours and have already reported your company to
otello twice. Don't make it a third."

As UK companies generally abide by tps, and as I've dobbed in the surveys, any cold calls are likely to be scams. I do not like being called at 9pm by some arse from Microsoft (not). My initial terror that a family member has died (because no good call ever came at that time) is replaced with cold anger that some fucker is trying to defraud me. So yes. I have tooted my whistle. Not right up close to the phone because I'm not actually heartless, but I do not feel like yet another argument with some criminal who either won't Fuck the Fuck off or keeps my line engaged for aged after I've buggered off.

If I've made every effort to avoid this shit, I have no urge to make nice nice with a bunch of arrogant fuckbastards at best, criminals at worst.

I loathe unwanted communications, and talking on the phone makes me feel sick. Too many vulnerable and elderly people have been conned by cold callers ; I had to see off scammers purporting to be the police "the police don't cold-call, you will now be reported to the real police and trading standards, bye"

WhoCallsMe.com are very useful for reporting purposes. Because the CAB, trading standards and age.uk don't particularly like cold callers either.

As it was a scammer trying to get access to her PC, probably to harvest her bank/credit card details, I would say that while it wasnt the best thing she could have done (denying you have a PC is the best thing to do), I doubt many people would have much sympathy for him.

The telephone preference service, was all it took, for me to stop 99% of nuisance sales calls.

What should be illegal is cold calling. My mom is 82 and all she has is the free gov phone, one of the old ones that only have 60 minutes. she is not on the internet to sign up for things. sending to vmail uses a minute, and the call is also a minute. She talks on the phone very little.

Yes it should.

ZOMBIE THREAD

I used to work on 999 (the amount of prank calls is utterly appalling) and one day the guy sat next to me suddenly yelled out in utter agony.

Some little shit had dialled 999 from a phone box, thrown in a firework and shut the door.

The call handler ended up at the hospital and off work six weeks. The police picked the little shit up and cautioned him.

It's not big and it's not clever.

And yes the system is programmed to kill the volume on excess loud noises, but it isn't instant, and in the second or so it takes to kick in damage can be, and is, done.

To stop cold callers:

1 Get caller display (free with some phone companies)

2 Get withheld numbers barred (only a few pounds a month)

3 Switch your phone off if you want to sleep or really don't want to be disturbed

4 If you belong to TPS, report every single sales caller to the TPS and the ICO too.

The calls will stop if you keep reporting them. Ignore all international callers and let the answering machine start as a sales caller will never leave a message.

For cold callers at the door; as soon as you see a person with a clipboard, leaflets, bag of stuff, brochure or bible slam the door shut before they start to speak. Do not worry about appearing rude as sales people rely on politeness to make their pitch!

HoneyDragonWearingLederhosen Please say you didn't drop the charge??

Chopstheduck - The call centre employees must follow a script or lose their job. You concede they may need the job but why are they so rude/don't take no for an answer. This is because they probably need the job and don't want to get sacked. I worked in a call centre (fortunately not a cold calling one, but a helpline where people called me for advice/information) and there is a set script you must follow. For every 8 staff there was a supervisor with a head set who listened in and out of your calls constantly. They also had managers listening to a percentage of your calls a week, they would make you listen to selections of them and give you a bollocking if you didn't follow the exact protocol (even if it was so obvious why, ie the person didn't have a good grasp of English and you were trying to simplify). At the end of the call we would HAVE to ask if the person would do a survey. Even if they had repeatedly said during the call they were busy, we had to persevere and say it will only take a few moments etc. There were times when i just couldn't bring myself to do it as the person was so cross and abusive. But if they found you doing this on more than a handful of occasions you were put on disciplinary and then if it continued you would lose your job.

Oh, and i already have tinnitus, and if someone blew a whistle in my ear it could make me deaf in that ear and hear high pitched sounds for days with terrible ear pain. How awful that people think that is okay to do. :(

DAMMIT - just seen it's a zombie thread! Ignore me :)

My mum used to do it. She still might . For years she was getting prank calls with heavy breathing down the phone line for a minute or so before they hung up. Nothing was ever said. She kept a tin whistle on the hall table and those calls stopped after a while. She doesn't do it to cold callers as far as I know though. She just says 'no thankyou' and hangs up. I don't bother answering the landline these days due to the volume of sales and scam calls. Sometimes I unplug it.

This annoys me because i work in a call center, actually on customer service. Last week i returned a call a customer made to me, got as far as "hi I'm frying from blah blah" and i got a whistle blown down the phone. I WAS RETURNING THEIR CALL!

(still touchy about it)

they didn't get the compensation they obviously wanted, but didn't deserve. It ruined my day. Bastards