Scam watch: dodgy cold caller offers

“never give your card details to someone who’s called you out of the blue” such simple advice yet I never understand why so many people fall for it.

I always get a caller to confirm they are who they say they are now, by asking for things like the 1st letter of my mother maiden name, or the 3rd letter of my memorable address.

If its a legit caller, they should understand.

I have two ways of dealing with cold callers.

1 I tell them I will get the person they need to speak to and then leave the phone of the hook. Long time record before they rang off is 23 minutes.

” I tell them the person they want is on another number and then give them the number of a massage parlour or other cold call number I may have collected.

After a few months my cold calls dropped to about two a week which I can live with.

Have fun
Dellboy

To save being pestered I changed my number in the hope the calls would abate, complete waste of time! When the phone rings and I pick it up without speaking, anyone genuine immediately says, “hello is that you Richard/Mr A? ‘ If there’s silence just put the receiver down straight away, they soon take the hint and gradually my ” cold calls” are getting fewer.

We have a very elderly relative who was conned regularly and, in addition, since her memory is bad she would agree to take a service that she already had with another company.

We solved the problem by purchasing a Truecall Care system. This only allows calls through from trusted friends, optician, doctor and dentist. If need be you can also limit outgoing calls.

If someone rings her who is not on the list, they hear a message from us and can contact us and we can give them a number that will allow access. This number, itself, can be changed when required.

Since we live some distance from our relative, the brilliant thing about this devise is that we can alter all of the settings remotely. So that if a new telephone number needs to be added, it can be done from our computer. It really is a brilliant devise.

We have the normal version of Truecall – again it allows trusted callers straight through but everyone else is asked by the machine to state their name – cold callers rarely respond so our phone does not even ring – the devise handles it all by itself.

We did take the option of being able to record our phone calls – this can be automatic or as and when required. We found this to be very useful in a dispute with a car company since we could download our conversations and tell them precisely what their representatives had said and at a what precise time they had said it during a particular conversation. It certainly rattled them.

My number of cold calls have reduced considerably, if it is a cold call, I either answer in German or with the first verse of “one man went to mow” in Swahili. This has proved very effective, especially if these calls originate from an overseas source, I would imagine answering in any foreign language would confuse them completely, for me it has proved very effective.

had a call, said they were from Microsoft and said my old computer had a virus and asked me to turn my computer on so they could solve the problem, I declined hung up and called Microsoft and was told not under any circumstances Microsoft do not call their customers and it was a scam, happened again a week later, just told them I was aware it was a scam and hung up.

Something that might help with so-called ‘survey’ calls. I always say I’m quite happy to answer their questions provided they understand I do not want any communication from those that I answer that I seem to be interested in. Often I don’t even get a ‘goodbye’!

I have registered my number with TPS, but still receive some calls. I deal with them in a simple way. Just take the call and press the mute button on the handset and continue with my job. Sometimes I keep the phone near to TV or near to the speaker of my audio system. So the caller can enjoy some music or so.

A good way of reducing the number of cold calls is to be careful where you give your number out. Since I removed my number from one particular site, cold calls are rare.

For sites that require a number to be put in before you can proceed, I give a false one.

When I answer the phone I tell cold callers that they are now through to the local CID.
They tend not to reply to that, and hang up. It’s been a while since I’ve had a call, I almost miss ’em…

We were also bothered with unwanted phone calls, evan though on TPS. We bought a new phone by which you can programme in the type of call you do not want. As a result we have had no such calls since installing the new phone – purchased from BT. It does require you to have Caller ID.

I was like everyone else, fed up of the phone ringing at all times of day & evening, that was until I asked talktalk what could be done about it. Now it’s wonderful in fact it’s so good I had withdrawal symptoms the first week ha! ha! ha! Thank you TalkTalk.

If not expecting a call I just knock them of f they do not ring back

If not expecting a call I lift receiver then put it straight down they do not try again.

I am getting calls by people saying they can guarantee to stop nuisance calls by putting us on a register, for which I pay some money (by card) I suppose, I told the last one it was a Con and she should get a proper job she did’t like me telling her what I thought and put the phone down on me. Some of these pretend to be from the Telephone Preference Service.