Can you see the number that’s calling you?

I completely agree with you Wavechange on making ALL unsolicited calls illegal. It is the only way to stop the misery it causes to so many people.

If Baroness Hayter thinks this little law will make any difference, she obviously doesn’t answer her own phone.

Wavechange, Completely agree. It should be made illegal to make unsolicited calls to private numbers for the purposes of marketing and “surveys”. Perhaps with an opt in if you don’t mind being pestered everyday.
The TPS is useless, I’ve been registered with them for years and I still get plenty of sales calls and sales calls under the guise of surveys.

The big problem both with TPS and any legislation to outlaw unsolicited calls is that many of these calls come from nuisance callers abroad who won’t be bound by our systems and laws. Don’t really know the solution to that other than perhaps have an international call acceptance on/off switch on our phones.

Chris – As was pointed out to me recently, it is already illegal for companies to make direct marketing calls if we have registered with TPS. However, without effective enforcement, legislation is worthless.

Telephone market research is legal, unfortunately, and I believe that we have been told that Which? has not intention to take action except where the rules are broken, for example when calls purporting to be market research are in fact marketing calls, which is very common.

In my view, nothing less than a ban on all unsolicited calls is acceptable, and the phone service providers should be required to provide the information needed to take action against organisations and individuals so that it is simply not worth the risk to make unsolicited calls.

I would be happy for individuals to opt-in to receive market research and marketing calls, though the danger is that this would provide scope for ‘mistakes’.

It is very sad that BT is making a profit from selling call blockers rather than taking action to stop nuisance calls.

I’m not receiving nearly as many nuisance calls as I used to but I still want to be vocal about this for the benefit of those who are, especially the disabled, elderly and those who work night-shifts. According to Patrick, we are due to hear some positive news from Which? soon.

Chris, I have a display on my phone and simply don’t answer if I don’t know the caller. If it’s important they can leave a message and I can get back to them. Simples !

Letting an unrecognised CLI go answered certainly isn’t the answer to nuisance calls as far as I’m concerned.

It still means I’ve been disturbed (or woken up if I were a shift worker), and it still busies my line for genuine callers.

Many telephones now let you choose to switch unidentified calls (those without a valid or an unrecognised CLI) direct to the answerphone. You can then invite the caller to leave their name, number and business if they wish you to return their call. So no uninterrupted sleep off shift duty!

@ terfar

Wrong, wrong, wrong !

Why should VICTIMS of this anti-social and illegal behaviour be expected to pay for an expensive special telephone / answering machine, to pay a monthly fee for CLI and to pay to return genuine calls?

I hope you’re saying that it’s the system that is wrong and not me. I gave you a solution to the current position so that you can get undisturbed sleep.

As I have posted elsewhere on this forum, I pay a Telco for the line rental and the phone service. I should not have to suffer all the unwanted nuisance calls.

My point was that there is a remedy for the current dilemma but admittedly, it does require some investment which is wrong.

I strongly stand by my main position in that I believe that CLI should be mandatory. No exceptions whatsoever. There just isn’t a reason not to use CLI.

But we also need an enforceable law, an agency to run it and a change in attitude to zero tolerance of illegal cold calls.

@ terfar

I appreciate your suggestion of buying a clever telephone and paying for CLI information. Fortunately I’m not a shift worker so nuisance calls aren’t as disruptive as they could be.

But I strongly believe that it’s the authorities’ responsibilities to take much stronger legal and technical action against nuisance callers (e.g. by JAILING directors of companies that pay for sales leads obtained from foreign call centres ringing numbers on the TPS list).

Instead, telcos etc just prefer to profit by flogging expensive phones and services. That’s what’s wrong: they should be forced to take action at network level, e.g. blocking transmission of calls with invalid CLIs and providing free blocking services (CLI display, ACR, Choose to Refuse etc).

However, individuals must be allowed to withhold their CLI, otherwise there would be no whistleblowers. Similarly, I don’t want to be bombarded with pestering calls for years afterwards if I phone around for insurance quotations but don’t buy.

I think we are pretty much agreed with all of that. It’s getting the government to make the necessary enforcement laws. Unfortunately, most of the government comprises technophobes or MPs with an interest in supporting these practices. And then of course, there’s all big companies that have the clout to pay for ‘professional’ lobbyists (something else that I hate about how the government works).

At least we have Which? and a couple of other on line helpers.

The nature of the information collected, whether general and anonymised or specific to the called party, makes a difference as to whether the purported “survey” is really “direct marketing” and therefore not legal.

Totally agree with you Ian,; but as the article reads it would be up to the nuisance caller to determine whether they were making a marketing call or not. If they think it’s a survey then there’s no need to disclose their number; clearly this cannot be acceptable.

1)-The need to obtain consent has been law for 11 years, but the law is never enforced.

2)-As for withdrawing consent; if you know which organisations have legally obtained your phone number, then you can send them an email. Of course it won’t stop those who have obtained your number illegally, most of them will never give you their name and addresses in the first place.

I agree 100%

alfa, You say “I have never knowingly given my consent to automated marketing calls”

Well if you ever got a “survey call” and answered just one question you have given that consent. That is how they get around the system and it’s legal, although obviously not in the spirit of the rules.

So don’t do surveys either.

As for withdrawing your consent I don’t know but it makes little difference anyway when most of these nuisance calls come from abroad where they are not bound by our rules.

Like I said elsewhere we an “international call acceptance” on/off switch on our phones.

This is a really good point. Landline providers have historically surcharged for CLI, yet mobile providers have always provided CLI as standard ever since it was introduced. The only reason to surcharge for CLI is to facilitate a misleading indication of price of the line rental. If an operator excludes a surcharge that most people need to pay (for a basic feature of the telephone system), then it makes the line rental look cheaper than it really is. For example, why not also surcharge for the facility to make the telephone ring when there’s an incoming call? This would be equally as unreasonable. Ofcom should clamp down on this silly surcharge, which is not objectively justified.

NFH – You could equally well argue that no-one should have to pay to retrieve voicemail on a mobile, which can work out very expensive for PAYG users. Both CLI and voicemail are useful services and there is the opportunity for service providers to make money from those who use these services.

I would have thought the CLI would travel down the line along with the phone call whereas retrieving a voicemail would involve making an additional phone call.

My point is simply that CLI is a useful service and provides the opportunity to make an additional charge. The point in Mark’s introduction is not about whether CLI is chargeable but the need for those involved in direct marketing being required to make their number available rather than withholding it.

CLI is not a service, but data. The data containing the caller’s number is carried on every phone call. Even if the caller withholds their number, the caller’s operator only sends a flag to withhold it and the data is still carried; it is then up to the called party’s operator to hide the data from the called party. One service that I use for incoming calls doesn’t always hide it, so I can see most or all of the caller’s number even when it’s withheld.

It is absurd for operators to deliberately hide a caller’s number from the called party on the basis that the called party hasn’t paid a surcharge. This data is carried anyway and is a standard part of the telecommunications systems used to deliver calls.

Voicemail is an additional service and is not a standard part of the telephone system. Personally I hate voicemail, both for myself and when I call other people. I would be delighted if operators started charging for it, but they won’t do so because it allows them to earn termination revenue for unconnected calls.

As I see it, it is a service because it is charged for. From BT’s website: “You’ll need caller display compatible equipment to use this service.” If companies can make money for providing extra features they usually will.

I cannot understand why smartphones don’t record messages, making voicemail services unnecessary.

CLI is not a service, but a built-in always-on feature of the public switched telephone network. Hiding the output of this feature from users who don’t agree to pay a surcharge does not mean it is an additional or separate service.

“I cannot understand why smartphones don’t record messages, making voicemail services unnecessary” – If a smartphone doesn’t receive the call, because it is out of coverage or switched off for example, then how would it be able to record a message? This is why voicemail is implemented at the network level. Voicemail is very much an additional service, although one that I wish was not enabled by default.

OK, let’s call it caller display, which is referred to as a service by BT and my phone provider. If you are not happy about then contact Ofcom. I’m trying to use everyday language that most people will understand.

Voicemail messages could be relayed to the handset when it is switched on a signal is available, just as text messages are.

I used the term CLI as this was the term used above in the main article. Call it “caller display” if you prefer, but it’s the same thing. But it is still not a service, but a standard feature of the telephone system that is always active. There is no justification for the called party’s network to deliberately suppress this data from the called party by virtue of the called party not paying a surcharge. The mobile networks have never engaged in these silly CLI surcharges, so why do fixed line providers?

“Voicemail messages could be relayed to the handset when it is switched on a signal is available, just as text messages are“. The GSM standard doesn’t allow for this, whereas it does allow for SMS text messages. For such a system as you describe to be implemented, the networks would have to develop apps to receive the voice messages with push notifications and delivery over IP. This is far too complex and expensive to implement, when the customer can simply call the voicemail number.

@wavechange – I’ll put this another way: Imagine if your e-mail provider surcharged you in order to see the sender’s e-mail address. In the same way that CLI data is included on every phone call, the sender’s e-mail address is included on every e-mail. It is equally absurd for a provider to levy a surcharge in order for the provider to refrain from hiding CLI data as it is to refrain from hiding an e-mail sender’s data.

And to think email addresses can be spoofed too. Making it an even more apt example.

Thanks for the information about how voicemail works on mobiles, NFH. It can be expensive for PAYG users, but thankfully it can be switched off.

I very much support all phone users having free access to Caller Display because it can help identify nuisance calls.

I assume that some companies charge for Caller Display on some tariffs simply because it is an opportunity to make more money, and that’s how business often works. Fortunately my phone service provider does not charge on any tariff. I’m going to carry on referring to Caller Display as a service because that is how it is commonly described, but thanks for letting us know how it works.

Absolutely agree with you on CLI.

Not only is a network feature sold as a ‘service’, but the markup is huge.

Openreach’s wholesale price to telecomms retailers is £1.50 per quarter – my provider marks that up by 100%.

And Openreach’s pricing is itself open to question – £6 p.a. for Call Display – essentially a bit of software – vs £93 p.a . for copper, networks & switches

Agreed. And they should also have to disclose the precise source of your name and number. When I received these calls (note the past tense as I’m now enjoying having no landline), I would ask where they got my name and number. They would often reply “It’s in our database”, to which I would ask them where the database had obtained my details, and the conversation went on fruitlessly. If callers don’t disclose this, then it makes it very difficult to identify the root culprit and put a stop to it.

To protect our privacy.

Oh? How? It just means that another two groups of ‘mystery callers’ get to plague us creating concerns about who called and why. Then, no doubt, local authorities, the Royal Mail, and any other organisation that considers itself to be a branch of the security service will ask for the same privilege.

No thanks, I want the same protection of privacy as I enjoy in my garden and on my doorstep. No identity, no entry.

If something the Police want to say is so important then it can be put in an envelope and posted. If the ‘NHS’ wish to contact me privately then likewise.

A requirement to disclose should apply to all organisations not just a narrow definition of ‘marketing calls’ or, otherwise, we will get another decade or two of ‘surveys’, ‘focus group calls’, ‘liaison cals’, requests for charitable giving etc. etc. When will people learn that organisations of all types simply cannot be trusted?

The next step of course is to tighten up on the data underlying their assault on our privacy and peace.

alfa, You say “I have never knowingly given my consent to automated marketing calls”

Well if you ever got a “survey call” and answered just one question you have given that consent. That is how they get around the system and it’s legal, although obviously not in the spirit of the rules.

So don’t do surveys either.

As for withdrawing your consent I don’t know but it makes little difference anyway when most of these nuisance calls come from abroad where they are not bound by our rules.

Like I said elsewhere we need an “international call acceptance” on/off switch on our phones.

I agree Martin. The Police and the NHS withhold their numbers so they don’t come up on caller display. So one might answer a withheld number just in case it’s say the hospital only to find Mumbai calling again. Almost defeats the whole principle of caller ID doesn’t it?

There is no reason the Police and NHS could not have “Police” or “NHS” come up on the caller display screen rather than “withheld”. It would protect the number they called from just as well and cut down the instances of us actually answering the Mumbai nuisance calls.

There is every reason to not let other members of the household know that someone from the Police, NHS, ChildLine and a myriad other organisations is calling.

Very true. We must be careful what we wish for sometimes.

Maybe we could ban overseas “withheld” numbers to start with and see where that takes us.

If you don’t want the ID display, turn it off or don’t subscribe to the service.

CID must be compulsory.

Child Abuse Help Line?
Alcoholics Anonymous?
Pregnancy Test results?
Domestic Violence/Abuse?
Samaritans?

Can you think ….. of others?

Many folk need protection from others in their household.

Ridiculous. Samaritans, AA, etc does not appear as such unless YOU program such into your telephone’ directory. All that displays is the number. So it’s an idiotic reason to not have compulsory CID.Even if the phone doesn’t display Samaritans or AA, what stops someone else answering the phone first?

“Ridiculous”? “Idiotic”?

If the number’s on your display, you can Google it.

If they leave a message “Hello, sorry to have missed you. Thank you for calling the Child Abuse Helpline …..”.

And yes, someone else answering the phone and impersonating the abused child IS a problem …. a very, very real problem.

It is NOT something that should be trivialised by our discussion of being annoyed by salesmen.

You know little about the procedures in use by childline.

terfar, yes you’re quite right – I know nothing about their procedures – I just used it as an example for dramatic effect.

But I’m always ready to learn and I’d be very interested to hear how they deal with the problem.

Well I won’t tell you how they ensure that a child isn’t compromised that way for obvious reasons. But your argument was flawed because in your example CallerID would not have prevented that message being left. Be assured that it would never happen with or without Caller ID.

Think about any organisation listed: would they call a client and leave a compromising message on an answerphone or pass on any private information to another person? In fact, if the correct person answers the phone, seeing the correct callerID displayed would give some reassurance about its legitimacy.

CallerID is no different than writing a letter to someone: would you write a letter without adding your name and address? So why would you expect to call someone and remain anonymous?

Your correct. I should not have been so confrontational. But I have always had a bee in my bonnet about the way the government backed down on caller ID. I think that rejecting it is being a luddite!

This is a service that allows text messages to be sent to a landline phone and automatically converted to speech.

Call 0800 587 5252 from the same line to opt out of receiving any Text To Speech alerts or to set curfew times between which these alerts will not be sent.

@Chris

Most telephones with an answerphone facility let you record your own message. So leaving a message such as,

“I do not answer calls not using Caller ID, so please leave your name, number and business. If you are legitimate, we will call you back.”

CLI should be mandatory for all regardless of race, religion, etc. There’s absolutely no valid excuse not to use CLI.

@Chris, Was one of the phones reviewed the BT 8500 ? The default for withheld numbers is they must announced themselves if they don’t the phone doesn’t ring. Bit of a pain for the genuine caller, but hey, UNBLOCK your number then. Simples.

Loads of them do this. It should be just as illegal to falsify your CLID as it is to conceal it. Likewise ‘legit’ organisations such as doctors, councils, police, banks etc. should be prevented from withholding their numbers.

In virtually all of the MMF cases they have been given the wrong phone number by somebody. If you tell them to stop and they don’t, then it’s harassment and a Data Protection Act breach as well.

Yes Castle, of course it is, but the problem then is in getting anyone to do their duty. West Midlands Police told me that such behaviour is ‘not a crime’ and flatly refused to do anything or to provide a letter to enable me to get my service provider to disclose who was calling me up to five times a day whilst witholding their number. No number or identity and no-one else is interested. How many days of my time am I supposed to use doing the jobs of all the agencies and regulators who are failing to enforce the few rules that we do have?

Josh, also above, is right, marketing calls are only a part of the problem. My parents were besieged by charities, financial scammers, debt collectors (who would simply not accept that they had had no loans and had not ordered from mail order catalogues and not paid the bill) in addition to the usual sellers of everything under the sun.

The ONLY answer is to make privacy and control regulations centred on the receiver and not the caller. It is no different and should be no different to the principles and laws that apply to visitors entering property and standing on the doorstep.

Martin, in my case I actually issued a county court claim against MMF for damages and it was settled at mediation. But of course, as you say, getting anybody to take up a criminal prosecution is a totally different story even if you know who’s calling..

That is an example of a scam run by criminals, one that is designed to defraud you.

It is run by people that are not complying with any of the laws relating to usage of the telephone, and never will.

Gerry. The health professional’s cli should display either a secretary’s number or the general surgery phone number. There is never a valid reason not to display a cli.

Good stuff Richard p but lets also have fines!

Which? is actually complicit in being the lead in a task force that was bound to favour some watered down system rather than strong action to stamp out the menace. If you read the 27 page report you will see it implicitly accepts that there is a right to call people at home once consent has by some means been obtained.

I think most people would think that in fact that nobody should ring you out of the blue to sell you anything other than following a very specific request by you – which is time limited say for a month after the rquest is made.

http://www.staticwhich.co.uk/documents/pdf/nuisance-calls-task-force-report-388316.pdf

Is this the danger of a policy of being involved with legislation at the Governments behest where the consumers voice is meant to be articulated by Which? but in fact is seduced/neutered into being Chair of a cttee where a consensus will be the aim – and representatives of the industry are involved.

” Attendees
Richard Lloyd, Executive Director, Which? (chair)
John Mitchison, Head of Preference Services, Compli
ance and Legal, Direct Marketing Association
Jan Smith, External Affairs Director, Call Credit
Anne Marie Forsyth, Chief Executive, The Customer C
ontact Association
Kevin Rousell, Head of Claims Management Regulation
, Ministry of Justice
Fiona Lennox, Executive Director, The Communication
s Consumer Panel
Steve Wood, Head of Policy Delivery, Information Co
mmissioner’s Office
Lynn Parker, Director of Consumer Protection, Ofcom
Mark McLaren, Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Manag
er, Which?
Thomas Oppé, Task Force Adviser, Which?
Michael Bristow, Marketing Operations Manager, Barc
laycard

Thanks for the link Dieseltaylor. Though I appreciate the effort that Which? is putting into getting rid of nuisance calls, I agree with you that their approach is not strong enough.

As I have said several times the only solution that is likely to work is to suspend the phone service of companies that make unsolicited calls.

This could be stopped by FCA, CMR, Ofgem, etc, banning the use of the telephone for lead generation and cold calling and irrespective of whether the calls are made direct or contracted out to some other company. These regulators have the power to suspend or revoke a company’s licence to trade.