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?

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

No, I do that. I tell them I'll run quickly and fetch my laptop, then go and get the supper on. I might pop back in 5 and tell them I'm having trouble reaching it, and please bear with me.

The way I see it, all the time they're waiting for me, they're not scamming someone more credulous.

[YouBetterWerk]

Some of these are brilliant.

Mine and my DP's favourite is (this is pretty bad), whenever we see an unknown number we answer with:

(panting and out of breath)Well, the job is done, but we need to clean up in here, there is blood EVERYWHERE

[Stringmeupscotty]

I was at a very senior, very professional colleague's house once having a drink schmoozing when her home phone went with a scam call.

She answered it and with her crisp posh, public-school voice said 'I'm sorry I'll have to put you on hold, I'm having an orgasm', put the phone in a drawer, turned to me and just continued with her conversation.

[Stringmeupscotty]

One I've seen on here before is answering the phone with 'This is a crime scene. The person you're calling has been murdered. How did you know the deceased?'



A few years ago my nan got a call 'from the internet'. No word of a lie, a scammer called her up and said 'I'm calling from the internet'. My nan's not very computer-literate but told him to fuck off all the same. Then she called me to ask if she thought I really did get a call from the internet. My nan would rather eat her own fingers than part with a penny of her money so she'd never fall for something like this but made me about all of the older people who aren't as wise and could be scammed by something like this.

[Aridane]

How come I never get these calls? I feel left out!

[ElizaPickford]

Brilliantly (yet really boringly) I've just learnt that I can activate my answering machine to pick up really quickly, which seems to be slowing them down. I think I can set up a "quiet time" thing as well, so that between set times only specific people on my contacts list can get through, which stops any out of hours silliness.

Hopefully effective but not as entertaining as Stringmeupscotty's colleague's orgasm line!

It makes me really annoyed to think that there are probably loads of poor vulnerable people falling victim to this type of scam - there must be quite a pay off in it for the scammers.

[Vycount]

While I'm reading this... phone rings... it's a man from "accident helpline" who has such an accent I have to ask him to repeat what he's saying 3 times.
"I'm phoning because you've had an accident".
"Nope".
"Oh (some more words I didn't understand)".
He puts the phone down.

[Sparklingbrook]

I get the one about industrial hearing loss sometimes. Comes up as a normal number on caller display. So tempting to just keep saying 'PARDON'.

[CrohnicallyInflexible]

I nearly got caught out by one of these, after I really did have a car accident.

They phoned up and I spent a while talking to them, they had my name and the make of the car the accident was in, so I had no reason to doubt that they were affiliated with my insurance company as they claimed. But DD was playing up so I asked them to send me some information in the post.
'You've got my address on file, haven't you?'
'Certainly, it's isn't it?'
'And can I just check you've got all the accident details there?'
'It was in wasn't it?'
'Actually, no it wasn't, and you've got my address wrong too, so you're not calling about the accident I had at all, you're not affiliated with my insurance company, you're just a cold caller so please don't phone this number again!' (Hangs up)

[RegTheMonkey1]

Although I'm an old biddy I have a young sounding voice on the phone. Someone rang today to ask for 'MrsRegTheMonkey'. I said she was out. The cold caller said 'are you a family member?' and for some reason I piped 'yes, I'm her daughter'. Cold caller: 'Are you over 18?' Me:'No'. Cold caller: 'Ok baby, take care.'

[silveroldie2]

I hate these people but keep them on line as long as possible so they get a big telephone bill. I usually play the doddery old fool, asking them to repeat everything at least twice which irritates the hell out of them which is a bonus.

[lithewire]

I had one of the 'I'm calling from Windows tech support' ones a while ago. At the time I had laryngitis and I summoned the energy to growl "NO" down the line, sounding a bit like the thing from The Babadook. They hung up.

[dustyovaries]

When this computer scam came my way I had a golden moment of retribution. I played along for about 10 minutes, made typing noises as I went;
"hang on sir there are now some letters appearing on my laptop screen"
"oh what are they?"
"Hang on I'll tell you...F for foxtrot, U for uniform C for charlie, K for kilo, O for oscar, F for foxtrot, F for foxtrot...oh isn't that weird!!!"
"hold the line please..."
The fucker went and got HIS supervisor to come and give me shit!! But I was on mat leave with lots of time on my hands, it was fun to play for a bit ;)

[MxTiggyD]

As a man I can just say "Mmmmmmm, what are you wearing?" in a really sleazy voice. I reckon I can get banned from any place you could name.

[Almostfifty]

I let the answerphone pick up all calls now.

[0x530x610x750x630x79]

I am with talk talk and blocked number withheld calls, it has really cut it down. But it does stop some calls from companies with odd exchanges

[Bearcatt]

Once I was phoned & they asked to speak to Mr Bearcatt.
I said 'He's not here'.
They asked me what time he would be back.
I said with a sob in my voice 'He's never coming back'. (Was he dead? Had he left me? No, but they would never know).
That sorted that cold caller out.

[Bunbaker]

I can't block number withheld calls as the children's hospital has number withheld numbers and DD is an outpatient there. Also, OH works from home and often gets calls from abroad, often withheld numbers.

I'm loving some of the responses on here.

Last time we received a series of nuisance calls from abroad (mainly in the middle of the night) I finally started answering "South Yorkshire Police". Funnily enough the calls stopped.

[TwistedReach]

i hate them. But i always think how much worse it would be to rely on this horrible (and deeply unrewarding) job to feed your family than it is to get bothered by receiving the calls. Particularly grim it is now 3rd world call centres that western companies use for this.

[Willdoitinaminute]

I love the ones where they ask if they are speaking to the lady of the house and of course I put on my best David Walliams voice and answer "Oh yes I'm a lady". They soon put the phone down.
As for the 'recent' accident callers they don't stand a chance. I once had a blazing row with one obnoxious woman about unsolicited use of fraudulently obtained personal details and data protection. The last one put the phone down in frustration.
As a previous poster commented the longer you keep them talking the less time they have to con the more vulnerable. I feel morally obliged to make their job difficult.

[TheHappinessTrap]

I had the accident call a while back. Man said he was calling about my accident. I said that was ages ago What took him so long. He said they were short staffed. I began angrily raising my voice saying that was not my problem and they needed to sort things out on their end. The whole farce escalated as we each made up cap. Eventually he made an ooh get you kind of noise and hung up on me.

[inmyheadimthequeen]

I do that Bearcatt! I'll say, 'he doesn't live here anymore', 'he's left me and he's not coming back' while my DD rolls about laughing. Sometimes I can't be bothered and move straight to, 'please take my name off the list and don't call this number EVER again' repeated ad nauseum. I do get TwistedReach's point about this being someone's job but actually, I have more patience with the 'doing a survey' ones, it's the 'had an accident' and 'calling about your computer problems' ones that drive me nuts. I blame DH, he works from home!

[lostincumbria]

Get a phone with TrueCall - I work from home and get zero nuisance calls from now. It even screens normal calls so people have to give you their name and you choose whether to answer. Any number you programme in gets through straight away.

[pamish]

I find speaking in tongues is effective.

The other one is to lure them along (if I'm doing something that I can chat through) for as long as poss, especially the Windows ones which are outright thieves, then say, no that doesn't work, I don't have a phone. Wait for them to explode in existential panic.

[pamish]

The only problem with being nasty to them is that they have your number. They could then call back, a lot. This happened once with one wanker, a dozen calls in a day, then fortunately he gave up after I left it on ansaphone. But something to bear in mind. Just rambling on is best. Their phone calls are zero cost so you're not racking up their bill, just stopping them doing over someone more vulnerable.