British Telecom - Their failure to deal with Nuisance Calls, Silent Calls, etc in a satisfactory manner. I am harassed on the phone daily by ONE specific company, several times per day.

[NotQuintAtAllOhNo]

I am sick to the back of my teeth with BT.

I have registered with the Telephone Preference service. Twice. It makes no difference. I have spoken to BT customer service many times.

Why can they not do anything? The calls are mostly from withheld numbers or from abroad.

If I block calls from all withheld numbers, this will also cause problems. Not only nuisance callers use withheld numbers these days.

My GPs surgery do their outgoing calls from a withheld number. This means, if I have spoken to the triage nurse in the morning, the surgery cant call me back.

The only other thing they can suggest is blocking ALL international calls. I cant do that. I am from overseas. This means my family cant get hold of me. Or worse, my fathers nurse! Or from my mums carehome!

And that is all the BT can suggest. Neither solution will work.

Every day I get between 2-4 calls asking for a Mrs McXYZ. Mostly the calls are from First Call in South Africa. I have asked BT to block calls from them. They cant. I have even given them the number they are calling from, yet, they cant block it. I can block it, if I pay an extra fee. So I upgraded my service, and I pay the extra monthly fee. The calls keep coming still, as this First Call, which is a South African based call center who is persistently doing nuisance calls on contract from UK clients, clearly ring from many different numbers, but now, instead of saying the number on my display so I can block it, it just says "International".

Mostly. they want me to do my PPI claims.

1. I am not Mrs McXYZ.
2. I dont have any business doing any PPI Claims.

I have tried reason with them. I have tried telling them that Mrs McXYZ has died/moved/never lived here, can they please update the record to reflect this.

I have tried to put the phone down next to my tv so they can listen to the news.

I have tried ranting and screaming telling them I will sue them for breaking international telephone regulations for harassing me, because numerous calls every day IS harassment.

I have tried talking goobledigook and sound like an utter loon, in the hope that they will just strike me off the list as a time waster.

I have tried politely telling them that I have already done my PPI claims, so they are wasting their time calling me.

I honestly dont know what to do.

We are spending a fortune on telephone bills, calling our family overseas. We have a high end BT broadband package. But I think we have no other option than ending our relationship with BT, getting A virgin or other broad band account, do skype calls and use our mobile phones. Because this is getting beyond ridiculous, and BT is less than helpful.

Any one else with similar experiences, and advice what to do?

Oh, and today I had a new one. Some bloke from the Iranian Community of London, calling every number in the phone book to inform about Iranian breaches of human rights.

A worthy cause I am sure, but our number is listed with the Telephone Preference Service, and should not receive such calls at all?? He was also asking for Mrs Mc XYZ.

Personally, I am ex directory, because I dont want anybody to find me!

BT can only do so much with calls originating from outside the country.

Your best bet is to block all incoming calls from withheld numbers and update your doctor details to call your mobile instead. Ditto with your family. If it's important you can call them straight back.

Personally as soon as I hear it's one of them calls, I just say 'no thanks' and put the phone down. Annoying yes but there's no point in getting worked up about it.

I don't get this. I read loads of these threads about nuisance calls and I go on any that I read and give a link to a device that actually completely stops them for £40. No-one every seems to pick up on it and then there are loads more posts after mine recommending people do various complicated and inconvenient things - from pretending to be other people to blowing whistles down phones to never picking up the phone. The solution is out there people.

*Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the selling of the device I've recommended, I just want to help people out who are being constantly pestered by problem callers.

Yes Cleopatra
Further up the thread I gave a link to Truecall which is a perfect solution. It was ignored. Seems people would rather complain about the problem that actually fix it.

Again, I have no connection with the product other than being entirely satisfied with it.

Those gadgets are possibly not very good for me, sallyingforth and cleopatra.

My family dont speak English, if their calls are intercepted by some robotic call handler asking them to say their name, they will most likely not understand what is going on, and hang up.

Even if I have explained it, the likelyhood is that they will hang up. My father is disabled, he has very poor hearing, and bad short term memory. He would hang up.

Perfect, if you dont expect international phone calls from elderly people who dont speak English, on a regular basis!

However, I think this Truecall seem like the one with the most features, so it could be worth giving it a try.

Quint - you can rent a virtual office very cheaply, they take your calls and screen them.

With the other issues - lack of internet, dialling tone etc. Try e-mailing Ian Livingstone who is the Chief Exec. or something of BT. We had a problem with our broadband a couple of years ago - they kept cutting us off for going over a data limit, even though according to our contract we didn't have one. It was all sorted within 24 hours and that was over the Christmas period.

That's not a problem Quint.
You only need to tell them that when they hear the message, even if they don't understand it, to press number 3 (or whatever number you set) and they will get straight through.

Good to know they can press a number, worth investigating further maybe!

Alibaba, if it is not fixed tomorrow when the engineer comes out, then I might do that!

Quint, the device I linked to doesn't have a robotic voice of any kind. I've blocked all international calls on mine but obviously I can see that wouldn't work for you. You could just block those awful automated calls though where they use an automated dialler, this would probably do the trick as most international pesty calls are of this type but your relatives could still phone you as normal. Then you could block calls from specific numbers if a particular number is bothering you. You could also block all withheld calls in this country if it suited you. Anyway, it's an option.

Sally, glad you are living in the land of peace and harmony too. My time is precious and I like to Mumsnet in peace!

It's infuriating, isn't it?

The silent calls are apparently not generally deliberate nuisance calls, but are caused by automated computer dialling: the computer dials thousands of numbers a day, connects upon pick-up, disconnects if there is no pick-up; quite often there is a delay before connection, or an error so that the connection is lost. That's the silence. There isn't even a person at the other end to shout at!

If there is a real person there, and they're an overseas company to mentioning the TPS doesn't help, then I find the most effective tactic is to say "Hang on a minute" and put the handset down gently without hanging up, wander off to do something else, and don't come back for 10-20 mins. When I do finally come back, I hang up without listening or speaking. At least they're losing profit as they wait; and I'm not getting all hot and bothered :)

The engineer was out today about our faulty phone line, so at least that is fixed.

We have decided to change our number as a first attempt at solving the problem, we have only had the number for under a year. If this doesnt work, then one of those True boxes seem a good option to try out.

Thanks.

OP
Get an answerphone, tell everybody you know that you will be screening ALL calls for a while.
Let the answerphone get ALL your calls
the call centre will soon take you off their list as they will pay for EVERY call, but NEVER get an answer.

NB Truecall also useless for me as I have to accept odd calls from potential clients

We get very very few calls now I have trained DH to stop being polite and helpful to random callers. We have always been TPS's.

Pick up phone:

Me: "hello"
them: "I'm calling about a survey" etc., etc.,
Me: "where did you get my phone number from"
them: "it's automatically generated"
Me: "we are subscribed to TPS"
Them: "oh" hang up usually. For the more persistent

Me: "I'm awfully sorry but do I know you?"
Them: "no etc, etc.,
Me: "I'm awfully sorry but I only have conversation with people I actually know such as my friends or professional advisers" "are you one of those?"
Them: "No maam but"
Me: "Then we will say goodbye, goodbye" puts down phone.

Takes about 90 seconds max - absolutely no angst on my part. Haven't had a sales call for weeks and weeks and weeks. Tempts fate.

"Hello may I speak to Mrs Peace"
"Who is calling please"
"I'm doing a survey on behalf of ...."
"Oh good, could you put me through to your TPS compliance department please"
"click"

never fails, even with the overseas ones

"we are working on behalf of ..."
"could you repeat the UK company name clearly please"
"click"

The phone companies recycle numbers, we got one previously used by a guest house which closed many years before we got the number. We STILL get regular calls from people wanting to book a room. I don't know if its possible to ask for a new number.

Why don't you contact First Call directly. You may be able to get your number removed. South Africa does have marketing privacy laws and the company does look legit for a marketing company it deals with lots of respectable clients.

if you change vyour number then make sure you re witheld, not in phone book, don't appear on electoral role or any of the places numbers can be found. always make sure you tick the ight boxes when on websites etc to not pass your details on. we only have a couple of cold calls a month, usually recorded.

indith
the international autodiallers just do every combination of numbers in turn, they do not use directories etc any more

and the electoral roll does not have your phone number on
and its not what they use - otherwise immigrants would be left in peace, and we are not!

the problem is that once ONE of them tags the connect button against your number, they sell the live numbers to each other with no reference back to prime data sources

Talkinpeace,
Yes if your number is advertised to potential clients then no box is going to help. You will have to take every call.
I work at home and have regular clients who either give their name at the message or use the key. Truecall has several different screening methods and I use different ones out of hours and weekends.
What I really like is that the box answers the call and checks it before your phone rings. If a call is rejected you don't even know it's happened unless you check the log.

sallying
does it track calls where the caller rings off - the amount of people I get who say, "oh I tried to call you" and I can check on my phone and prove they did not ....
and a withheld block would be no good to me because quite a few big public sector switchboards come up like that.

Talking
It saves all call numbers received (and dialled) together with the time of day and call length, regardless of whether they are answered.

If you get a call you don't like you can 'zap' it which means they get a recorded message saying not to call again. That number then goes on a zap list which means it will always be blocked in future without you even hearing a ring.

There's an option to save all the call data to an online database so you can check who has called you from anywhere.

You can also have a star list which saves your friends' numbers. When they ring they will always be connected straight through regardless of the blocking method in use.

If you have set it to reject anonymous calls it actually plays a recorded message to say it can't connect without a number. I have found that banks etc are now getting aware of this and will usually have an alternative method of calling with their number.

BTW if you are thinking of buying one it's cheaper from Amazon than from the maker's website :)

Infuriating. I have the number of the former physiotherapist to the English National Ballet and have endless distressed parents calling me to get emergency appointments for Araminta's foot. I also have a number which is one digit away from our local 24 hour pharmacy - cue calls at 2am asking if I have any xyz obscure medicine in stock.

I have had this number for two years and still get far more calls for those enterprises than I do for myself. At the beginning I was getting six or seven calls a day for the physio! It's better now but I have taken to screening all calls via an answerphone message which includes the words "I am not Shirley the physio ..." and I still get messages asking for Shirley.

I am also on TPS but it does have its limitations. It also, annoyingly, can't prevent firms with whom you have a relationship from calling you. So Amex took to calling me every night at 7pm to ask me to take out another card. I told them I was on TPS and they said it didn't apply because I was already a customer of theirs. I was livid - I am a customer of hundreds of businesses and I don't want them all calling me at 7pm!

That's not very helpful I realise. I suppose one option would be to send a formal and legalistic letter to First Call threatening them with legal action if they continue to harrass you. Send it recorded if you can. Throw in the name of your S African lawyer (google!) who will pursue this if calls do not cease within 4 weeks.

I emailed First Call on the 31st, and fingers crossed NO marketing calls with PPI claims since then!

I have found the perfect way to end nuisance calls. Recently someone called and as always started with "How are you today?" So I replied "How nice of you to ask. Well, I have been taking (list medication) for (list complaint) and it hasn't been working very well and of course (list another med) for (list another complaint) and I really don't feel any better." He replied "What are you talking about?" I said "You asked me how I was and I have told you but your little piece of paper doesn't tell you how to deal with that does it?" He replied "I'm gonna take you off our list. Nutter!". Not very polite but it seems to have done the job, no calls since! Tried to complain to his company as they had left their number but surprisingly their answerphone was full!!??!! You might pass this along as it works very well and rudeness or politeness to them never does as they just keep calling back.

PS. Joined Which for a month and they say that The Phone Preference Society has over 10,000 calls per month and they cannot cope so try my way - what have you got to lose?

For the past couple of years I have been keeping a log of phone calls from all sorts of companys. They range from PPI to Debt collectors asking for someone who doesnt live here. When I have been on comparison websites for insurance I get inundated with insurance phone calls.

So, in 2 years, with calls to my mobile and house phone I currently have
84 different phone numbers listed.

I never answer the call if I dont know the number then check it on my list to see if it is on there, if not I add it on.

Cant say they really bother me as I never pay attention to the phones and just let them ring out.