Telephone Number With-held

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My mother is disabled and to answer the phone if not next to her is quite an effort.

However the new BT phones I bought her have an option to reject number withheld and intentional calls so I have been able to really reduce the silly calls.

Just in case there is a power cut I have one phone which is not cordless and I have found it surprising on who withheld their number.

Ambulance Service and Artificial Limb centre are two examples. She has a monitoring service so should be no problem but why would any emergency service withhold their number this is crazy.
 
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My Siemens cordless phones can be set to silent ring for number withheld and international calls. They do however go to the answering machine where callers are invited to say who they are. If I am in the same room I can hear and screen them. Most spam callers hang up when that happens.

The companies and public sector organisations who withhold their number are going to have to come to grips with the fact that anonymous calls will not be answered, and will have to stop being secretive. You could start encouraging them by preparing a standard letter to send to those who do this silly thing.

Telling the person making the call won't do any good.
 
A lot of automated switchboards automatically withhold the number because all you would get was the switchboard number, not the number of the person dialling. (There could be 2000 extentions on one switchboard number) Even if you did get the number no one would answer as they are automatic, they do not use an operater.
 
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that is a problem for the company making the calls. I wonder what they will do about this problem of theirs?

making them aware of their problem is a good frst step.
 
Ambulance Service and Artificial Limb centre are two examples. She has a monitoring service so should be no problem but why would any emergency service withhold their number this is crazy.

Not crazy at all. If they didn't withhold the number then every numpty who got a call from them would ring them back to try and bypass the proper number. Calls to many organisations rely on being answered in the right place to handle the call, record details of the caller and control who and where the call should be directed. Ringing back to other parts of an organisation would just be chaotic as they would not be geared up to handle the calls.
 
That's interesting Eric, I thought it was more to do with the provider than the actual phone?

I used to be plagued with unwanted calls when with B.T. and Virgin, until someone told me he’d swapped to a company I’d not heard of before called Primus

Not only are they good but they are cheap and they seemed to filter out many of the nuisance calls I was getting somehow. I’ve been with them about three years now and, IIRC, I have only had two or three nuisance calls in all that time.

I think it’s impossible to reject 100% of the junk because they craftily have some software which keeps incrementing a number and dialling it until they get an answer. (So I was told).

If someone from my work phones me at home the number is automatically withheld from view even though it is a genuine call. But Primus doesn’t prevent that, which is good. This used to be a good indication of a nuisance call but I notice the latest way to 'get you' is to use a number you can see which looks genuine.

TBH I only got it for the broadband and a dongle is useless in my area. (Long painful story). :mad:
 
I think the TPS can only control UK landline Marketing Firms,

A lot of these cold calls come or are routed through Call Centres in Mumbai, all is needed is a Computer Programme that will dial up thousands of Telephone Numbers per minute,
similar programmes are available to search for Web Site addresses for junk mail purposes.
You cant really escape this modern electronic world
 
If calls from overseas are made on behalf of UK companies they still come under the remit of TPS.

Whilst I agree you may not be able to stop everything I have found both TPS and MPS to be quite effective. I registered my parents and mother-in-law and they have not had any nuisance calls since. The important thing to remember is to re-register every 2-3 years.
 
If calls from overseas are made on behalf of UK companies they still come under the remit of TPS.

Whilst I agree you may not be able to stop everything I have found both TPS and MPS to be quite effective. I registered my parents and mother-in-law and they have not had any nuisance calls since. The important thing to remember is to re-register every 2-3 years.
You must be lucky with the companies that make this type of call. Our experience is that many companies just ignore it. I know I should report them but somehow doubt it would make much difference.
 
jj4091";p="2832459 said:
.......... Our experience is that many companies just ignore it. I know I should report them but somehow doubt it would make much difference.


On the contrary! There have been a few firms prosecuted lately for this type of thing BECAUSE people complained. They may not do anything if they receive just a few calls but if everyone who got them complained then the numbers would soon rack up enough for the authorities to investigate.
 
I've posted this before, but my method is perhaps the easiest.

Get an answer phone. I just let it ring and, if they answer the recorded message, I pick up if I know who it is and just ignore it if it's junk. Having said that, I find that most cold callers don't even bother to continue the call once they are aware it's a recorded message.

It's also useful for when the mother-in-law calls!
 
Jesus what a bunch of muppets, all you gotta do is put the phone down. What perfect lives you must have if this is the kind of thing that gets your back up. :rolleyes:
 
'Put the phone down' that's the last thing I would do, I love the wind up.

When I moved a few years ago, I had the phone number changed which no one had yet. I got home from work the following day from taking down a ceiling, I was very dirty.
Anyway I was in the shower and the phone rang and I thought I would let it ring, the basket just kept ringing. In the end I stormed out of the shower to answer the phone for a salesman asking for Sally. My reply was:

'SALLY? She died last week in a ****ing hit and run'

The sales rep was so apologetic it was unbelievable. He never called back

Andy
 
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