Nuisance Phone Calls

[David Gwilliam]

I am on the Telephone Preference Scheme which works well except in one case. I keep getting phone calls about a non-existent car accident.

If I am feeling mischievous I lead them on with a rigmarole about not believing what was in the Leicester Mercury as if I had drunk seven glasses of whisky I would not have been able to text at the wheel. claiming the accident occurred because I was distracted by a sudden vision of Christ. But there are times when I am busy and it is just an irritation.

My question is this: if I just place the phone down rather than on the receiver am I right that this uses up one of their lines and is a nuisance for them.

 

[jb5000]

That's right, so long as there's a connection they will be being billed for it, and they generally have a number of lines which you will be using one of. I'm on TPS too and see to do better than most on it, but do this too when called.

 

[Motown Fox]

We were having a discussion in the car the other night about cold calling and my son who works on incoming calls for O2 was asking each of us how the caller identifys you and that they break data protection if they say your full name before finding out it's actually you. They should ask is that Mrs Smith?
So he asks my mum (up for family get together) how she deals with such callers and what do they say to her and what she says to them. And she answered "I'm not in"
What she meant was she tells them that Mrs H...... isn't in, but it had all of us in the car in fits of laughter.

 

[spionfox]

I am on the Telephone Preference Scheme which works well except in one case. I keep getting phone calls about a non-existent car accident.

Was it from 0207 946 1034 by any chance?

I had a call last night where a young Asian sounding female told me she had been informed I had been in an accident that wasn't my fault. I said "yes, yes I have , how did you know?". She then disappeared to be replaced by an older Asian sounding male who asked the same question with the same response from me. He then was immediately replaced by a fairly well spoken African sounding male who asked the same question. I said the same words again and he simply said where did the accident happen? I told him if he had been informed of my accident he should know and he hung up!

Seems like as soon as one of the basic operatives get a 'bite' they escalate the call to someone more senior.

Wankers the lot of them.

 

[Mawsley]

But everyone knows you had an accident with the chains...

 

[David Gwilliam]

I had a call last night where a young Asian sounding female told me she had been informed I had been in an accident that wasn't my fault.


.

It has always been a young Asian male. If it had been a female I would have kept the bit about seven whiskies but left out the bit about seeing Jesus in front of my car. I don't mind a young woman thinking I am a drunk but even on the phone I certainly don't want one to think I am religious.

 

[camberwell fox]

In all seriousness this kind of call is a problem.

I received a call from BT and the caller had my name, address, telephone number (obviously) and me BT account number.

He claimed my broadband account was being hacked into and that I was going to receive larger charges than usual due to this.

He gave me a website address to log onto where he could also view my internet usage.

I smelt a rat and asked him for further info about me and my account. He couldn't provide any so I hung up.

I then called BT to verify the call and they had no record of it.

Be VERY careful - I am no mug but was nearly taken in.

 

[Yorkshire Vixen]

The TPS is crap IMO!! Never stopped us getting nuisance calls, so instead we got a BT 8500 Call Blocker phone and it's great!! The caller has to give a name before it rings through to you and then you still have the option to accept the call or not. It even shows you which numbers have been trying to get through to you.

 

[SwedeFox]

Went along with one of these today, about my computer being infected, and they wanted me to put a six-digit code into www.support.me. I suppose that would make them take control over my computer in some way but unsure what they intented to do (I hung up before I found out). Maybe read my TB private messages?