Telephone forums

[WoodMangler]

Does anyone know of any forums to do with landline telephone handsets ? I'm getting 10-12 silent calls a day from overseas, and the ever-more-useless BT say they can't do anything to stop or block them, so I'm looking for a handset which can be set to not ring out (or answer and hang-up) if there's a unidentified caller.

 

[MickCheese]

We have had a lot of this recently.

I looked at this.

http://www.optoutuk.com/callblocker.asp?screen_id=intro

Know nothing about it though.

Mick

 

[Dodge]

Same here

"International" calls are the pain in our village - everyone is moaning about them getting several silent calls a dayand as you say BT DONT CARE!

 

[Digit]

Buy a referee's whistle, pick up the hand set and BLOW! If they can still anything after that it will probably be you beathing heavily! :lol:

Roy.

 

[RogerP]

Buy a referee's whistle, pick up the hand set and BLOW! If they can still anything after that it will probably be you beathing heavily! :lol:
Roy.

They are recordings .....

 

[Digit]

Not the ones we get, most of them seem to originate from India and are definitely not recordings.

Roy.

 

[WoodMangler]

Mine are mostly just silent calls - if you stay on long enough you eventually hear a voice say 'goodbye' and it hangs up.

There is absolutely no way to complain about BT, as we 'peasants' aren't allowed to speak directly to OFCOM - we have to go through our telephone supplier, who is (of course) BT...

 

[WoodMangler]

We have had a lot of this recently.
I looked at this.
http://www.optoutuk.com/callblocker.asp?screen_id=intro
Know nothing about it though.
Mick

That looks as if it might be useful, thanks.

 

[RogerP]

Not the ones we get, most of them seem to originate from India and are definitely not recordings.
Roy.

We are on Virgin Media and don't get many of these nuisance calls but those that we do get are almost always recorded messages in an American accent.

 

[Digit]

Our new handset displays caller numbers, the nuisance calls come up as 'International Call,' or 'Number Unknown.' So we can just ignore them.

Roy.

 

[WoodMangler]

Our new handset displays caller numbers, the nuisance calls come up as 'International Call,' or 'Number Unknown.' So we can just ignore them.
Roy.

Ours says "Out of area", but you have to get up and go to the phone to see it.

 

[Paul Chapman]

There is absolutely no way to complain about BT, as we 'peasants' aren't allowed to speak directly to OFCOM - we have to go through our telephone supplier, who is (of course) BT...

There is nothing to stop you complaining to Ofcom about silent calls or about the service you are receiving from BT http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/t ... lent-call/

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Benchwayze]

That's a lot of money just for a bit of peace and quiet.
I like Roy's idea best! :evil:

 

[Benchwayze]

There is absolutely no way to complain about BT, as we 'peasants' aren't allowed to speak directly to OFCOM - we have to go through our telephone supplier, who is (of course) BT...

There is nothing to stop you complaining to Ofcom about silent calls or about the service you are receiving from BT http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/t ... lent-call/

Cheers :wink:

Paul

Thanks Paul,

Although, I already subscribed to the opt out. It doesn't stop them, and the callers you can speak to just say sorry, then ring again another day! They are breaking the law, but who is going to do anything to them? Especially if they are in India?
:?

 

[WoodMangler]

There is absolutely no way to complain about BT, as we 'peasants' aren't allowed to speak directly to OFCOM - we have to go through our telephone supplier, who is (of course) BT...

There is nothing to stop you complaining to Ofcom about silent calls or about the service you are receiving from BT http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/t ... lent-call/
Cheers :wink:
Paul

Thanks - didn't know about that.

ETA: I have no faith in that - it promised a confirmatory email, but didn't ask for an email address to send it to...

 

[blurk99]

we used to have one of those 'call blocker' services installed by the company on the line (i think it was when we had orange doing our landline and internet etc...) neat little trick - we recorded a very short message telling people to press '5' to talk to us, by the time these computerised call centres are connected the message has finished and they just hear a quiet line (the house phone doesn't ring until the appropriate number is pressed) after registering with the telephone preference service though we've had very little in the way of cold calls / silent calls etc...

jim

 

[moppetsdad]

We were getting two or three every day silent and indian calls until we instaled an answerphone and in the three months or so since we have had it we have only had one message and that was from british gas telling us how to give them a meter reading, now we only get about one call a week it also has caller id so if we don't know the number we let it ring amd after six rings just as the recorded message kicks in thet hang up, wish I had bought one years ago.

 

[woodaxed]

Buy a referee's whistle, pick up the hand set and BLOW! If they can still anything after that it will probably be you beathing heavily! :lol:

Roy.

Ive got a air horn guaranteed to remove brain cells and anything else that gets in the way

 

[Harbo]

We have some Panasonic phones with an Answer Machine base station which we keep switched on all the time.
The phones have caller display and two memory banks - one allows you to actually audibly record the name of the person calling and the other memory bank allows you to have a different ringing theme for different categories.
So if the phone rings, if it's somebody we know, we either hear their name or a friendly ring - other calls we can look at the number to see if we recognise it, if not it goes to the answer machine.
Very rarely do these unknowns leave messages.

We get a persistent one from Ringwood - which I've googled to find that it is Oxfam!
And another with "Number withheld" which used to ring several times a day - they seem to have given up now?

Rod

 

[tomatwark]

We are on call preference at home and when we get the odd cold call, I tell them that they are obviously a c**p company in financial trouble as they can't afford an up to date data base and the sales person should maybe thing about looking for a new job as the one they have will not last long.

They very rarely ring back.

At work I ask " who's calling" this always seems to through the Indian's off their script, if they tell me I then ask them what it is regarding, this normally confuses them even more, when they tell me, I say I am not interested and not to call me again.

When they do, I ask again "who's calling" and then say I will just put you through, lay the hand set on my bench and carry on with my work and about 5 mins or so later hang up.

The really annoying ones I have had recently is due to the fact my van insurance is due and a couple of years ago I used a comparison site, and my data has obviously been sold on.

I will never use a price comparison site again.

Tom