Update: Calling time on withheld numbers

Indeed, bishbut! Bona fide companies will welcome your call back. And if they’ve commissioned an agent to call you, that agent will normally have phone system software which shows you the originating company’s general number as source (the same software that’s now used so widely for scamming!) However, most companies are not yet up-to-date with this technology, and if the farmed-out calling is by homeworkers, it is they who will not use redirection software (they can’t afford it!) and would prefer not to have calls to their home number from their employer’s customers. That’s an issue that will have to be sorted out, somehow – maybe the homeworker can call via the company’s switchboard with the calls rerouted to the customer – if they have a modern system.

Otherwise, blocked number of origin will be either from an illegal caller, or your nervous relatives and friends. In the latter case, the only answer is to allow your answering service to pick up the call, listen in, and answer if you recognize the caller. I’ve done this for years, and it’s very effective: human cold callers hang up; autodiallers cut off, and machine messages can simply be ignored and deleted later.

I quite agree. It worries me that this is only directed at companies as really nasty calls would slip in. Is it not possible for all calls to need their number displayed?

What are the chances that a caller who is already breaking the law when they make that call will comply with a request to reveal their number so as to make it easier to apprehend them?

Trouble is that many companies which you may use or need do actually have withheld numbers. Many holiday companies and hotels are culprits too, which is quite baffling because they may have messages for you and these will not be received. I am still getting nuisance calls from withheld numbers so the deadline for making this illegal does not seem to be working!!!

It is probably a quirk of legal history that it is even possible to withhold your number when ringing someone’s telephone bell. After all, if the police were patrolling a street and saw people wearing masks ringing on people’s door bells they would probably at least stop them or even arrest them for threatening behaviour or something like that.

Yes, John. Originally, it was to protect the innocent, when caller displays first came in! How times have changed.

Absolutely, Trolka. My Call Guardian equivalent is integrated into our BT8500 phones, and these systems are a real boon. Some people have commented here that no-one should have to pay in order to stop these nuisance calls; but even when the law forbids commercial calls from having blocked numbers, the scammers won’t be stopped because they’ll ignore the law. As one previous respondent has said, it’s like asking a burglar to leave his identity for the police! Some sort of paid system for calls is the equivalent of locks and a burglar alarm. In its simplest form, a cheap answering machine or the 1571 system can take your calls, and you can vet them later.

PS
With this system a password number can be given to favoured callers who always conceal their numbers (vulnerable folks and doctors, for example) so they can short-cut the screening and get straight through.

BT should give these phones or their technology FREE to existing customers. They make enough money out of us already and it is not fair to ask for more when they have the technology to deal with it.

Roger, there’s a simple answer. Change your outgoing message to say that everyone should leave a message and you will call back immediately if you can. Then, if you’re suspicious of a number, let it go to autoanswer, and if it’s a real person you recognize, answer right away, before the reply beep. Or go one better and buy TrueCall, Call Guardian or BT 8600 phones, which screen even better than this.

Good thinking TroIka- makes me suspicious of anybody dissing call-blockers.

What a good idea for BT to charge for withheld numbers, I get a lot but my Call Guardian from BT filters out the good from the bad and only genuine callers get through.

My story is the same. Im self employed. I have abandoned meetings, finished mobile calls early, slid dangerously donw ladders and gone racing from the car park to get to my phone only to be greeted with one of these robot calls. I get up to 5 a day, every day. Always fake CLIs, always automated calls. I tried a ‘call angel’ call blocker to stop international or witheld numbers but it unfortunatly also blocks most mobile numbers that start +0044, useless for me as my clients are often also self employed and use their mobiles to riung me for business. BT/Openreach already have the technology to block fake CLIs but dont.

I agree. The government should ban all number withholding, starting with its own agencies such as the NHS.

NHS and doctors surgeries often have witheld numbers because they bulk-buy telephone lines through an IP based ‘virtual’ pabx. The hospital may have 1000 lines for example and/or route outside calls through other countries such as Mauritius for cost-saving reasons, meaning a valid CLI might be useless or impossible especially if a hospital shares its bulk line pool with another hospital or surgery in the same healthcare trust.

The problem of international telephone fraud and spam is so serious that it seems reasonable for Which? to campaign to the government and BT to evolve a technical solution so that people can be aware on CLI that they have been telephoned by the NHS.

Yes, that is a very valid point. It is like the law that people shouldn’t listen to police radio. It was pretty stupid given that if you were breaking a serious law such as that against robbery you would hardly be put off facilitating that by listening to police radio because the latter is illegal.

What the government should be doing is to facilitate engineering that will enable telephone subscribers to buy telephone instruments that block all but invited calls. This could be achieved by banning CLI blocking, so the telephone subscriber at every number called can know who is calling.

In addition, international action could ensure that all other countries did the same. This could be achieved by refusing any traffic from countries that do not comply, or at the very least implementing calling country identification CCI. Telephone subscribers could then automatically ban calls from specific countries if their telephone instruments could be programmed so to do.

Of course, the latest development is that the CLI shown is a premium rate number. When callers receive a nuisance call some then inflict further pain on their pocket, rather then merely wasting more time, if they are foolish enough to call it back.

That’s an interesting concept, Nashga! No unsolicited calls, so presumably you require a letter asking whether they might ring? Of course, ‘no unsolicited mail’ precludes that! And if people arrive in person to ask to phone you, they will meet a sticker on the door forbidding unsolicited visitors. That really IS a ‘my home is my locked-and-barred castle’ situation. No new neighbour may call round; no vendor from whom you have made a purchase may warn you of possible dangers; no hospital or surgery may offer you cancer tests; no local council or utility company may send you anything to which you have not already given specific, individual assent If this is our future, it will leave me feeling very isolated!

A further suggestion for your Brave New World: no advertiser may place before your eyes or ears any item to which you have not assented in advance – such as hoardings, bus and tube adverts and radio adverts in shops.

The difference with a telephone call is that a bell rings demanding your attention. A letter or email can be ignored much more easily, or even responded to when you have had a chance to consider it.

That’s a canard, JohndeRivaz. We can perfectly well ignore a phone call if we haven’t trained ourselves to give it priority. Best thing is to let a machine pick up the call, then respond if you want. I use the TrueCall system, in BT’s 8500 system, and that makes it simple, but any old-fashoined answering machine will do, especially those that let you listen in and answer only of you want to. YOU are in charge – so TAKE charge!

Nashga, this was discussed in January when the conversation began, and I made the point then that the reputable companies will generally follow the law (not because of fines, but because of bad publicity), while the ‘bad guys’ will ignore it all, if they think they won’t be rumbled.

A couple of weeks ago, the conversation was updated with the government decision that valid numbers (that, when called, would connect to the original caller) must be shown on caller displays from 24th May. This gives legitimate cold-calling companies enough time to get in an engineer to make the adjustment. Such companies are required to observe the Telephone Preference Service rules. So, if you want pukka cold-calling companies to leave you alone, register with the TPS now!

Of course, the dodgy companies will still call you, and the spammers and scammers, and Auntie Eda that you’ve not heard from for a decade. To avoid the crooks, use an answering service or machine. And never give out confidential information over the phone, no matter how plausible the blandishments or the supposed emergency!

The absurd is expecting crooks to obey the law. The rest of my comment shows the absurdity of being able to get prior permission for a cold call – by any medium. If there’s any prior agreement, it’s not a cold call!

Being listed on the TPS is refusing prior permission. People used to put “no hawkers or circulars” on their front door because they didn’t want their bell being rung by these people. What Which? is asking for is a similar facility for telephone subscribers.

It seems ridiculous that some companies resort to lawyers to do tricks to force their way in (such as having terms and conditions of use that allow an organisation with whom customers dealt with to sell their telephone numbers and addresses). This costs money for the company.

A customer who is on the TPS has clearly stated that he doesn’t want such calls, so how can a sane person expect him to give business to anyone making such a call?

Making these calls to people who don’t want them is an idiotic crime. Maybe people who do it (or employ others to do it) should face a choice between a fine or a compulsory course in elementary logic.

They already have elementary logic John its called greed and avarice, and they never get beyond the elementary level to see what their actions does to others as they dont care .

Mother of three-call the police and they will advise . If his number is withheld and is a genuine UK telephone number that makes no difference to your telephone company AND the police finding out who he is a few clicks on a keyboard and voila !

I found out one of the funeral companies real address (not the agent ) and posted it on a UK website I no longer frequent saying ,in plain words what I thought of them , within a week the website took down my post as the company complained it was ” interfering with their business “

If you are making a business call to a residential subscriber this new regulation will directly affect you and it will be illegal to withhold your number. If you are calling a business number the regulation will not apply, but surely they will need to have your number in case they need to call back. The best way to deal with this is to have a second line for business calls only and not answer it at times when your ‘office’ is not open – an answering machine-combined telephone is a good way of providing basic opening hours information and taking messages.