Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Bless me father for l have sinned.....
Today, l have screamed and sworn at three people who have rung my house phone with their load of tosh.

The first one a recorded message, l cut off before he got past, you may have been in a.....
The second, a jovial voice from a wine company who was only after an order!
The third, took me over the edge...'Good Afternoon, Ma'am l am ringing you about your computer....she got both barrels of screaming from me.
Why do these nuisances drive a nice, easy going person to a screaming banshee?
Are you nicer than me to them or does your reaction to them warrant you going to Confession?

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Confession, definitely.
Followed by anger management

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

You should hear me if one of those morons wakes me from a good nap. LOL It's not pretty. The rest of the time I just hang up on them.

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Very similar to reading an ostensibly innocuous thread and stumbling upon a crude post, added to annoy.(Mags please note)
I have a call blocker on my phone, I just press the star button twice and the caller is blocked forever.......simples

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Some points to note:

1. These companies work from a database
2. Your name and number is on that database
3. There are flags against your entry to indicate whether you are a viable good target for them or any other company
4. The very act of answering the phone places a tick in the box that your number is viable and a good target for spam calls. What you say on the call is irrelevant

The more you answer, the more you make yourself a viable target and thus the more phone calls like these you will get. The companies just keep buying databases of viable targets and/or sell those databases to other marketing companies.

The solution is simple.

Do not answer the phone.

Let it ring out, as long as it takes.

Then do a 1471

If you recognise the number as a loved one or friend, then phone them back and tell them in future to only let the phone ring 2-3 times and then hang up.

If the number was withheld or is unobtainable then ignore it.

The spammers will initially ring and ring, sometimes letting it ring 30-40 times in their frustration. They will keep trying over a few days calling at different times. When they get no answer from that number they will flag your entry in the database as a POOR target and other companies will then not bother to try it. You may even drop off the database as a result the next time they filter out all the good viable targets.

Your family and friends will soon get used to the way you operate and will just ring 2-3 times, hang up, and wait for you to call back.

Simples and very effective.

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Another viable solution but sadly one that you have to pay for. Call blockers only work if your phone line has "Caller ID" enabled and that is a chargeable subscription service (whether it's included in your phone package is irrelevant, you are paying for it). In effect that means you are giving in to blackmail or rather to a "protection racket". You are paying someone to stop bad people being a nuisance to you. No different really to a corner shop having to pay someone £100 a week to stop the Chinese Triads coming round.

So yes, it's a solution, but not a good one imo. We shouldn't be bowing down to these protection rackets. We should be lobbying the telecoms companies to enable Caller ID on every phone line for free and providing a service for us to block calls.

Aside from that the solution is slightly flawed in that you are always going to answer the call the first time to find out who it is before you then block the number. You will have identified yourself as a viable target from answering so you will continue to get your number passed around the marketing community of businesses. You'll just end up continually blocking numbers.

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

I always swear at them, it's what they have come to expect.

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Thanks for that Realist, you really are a mind of useful information on most subjects.
I was actually waiting in for a call or l wouldn't normally answer, l'd just let it go onto the answerphone.


Malcolm, l take it, your phone is ultra modern? I have Panasonic quad cordless phones that l have probably had for over five years?
I am also ex directory and l am sure l am signed up to the 'no nuisance calls' organisation.

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

Trouble is no nuisance calls only means uk not world wide so they ring from abroad. Call blocker phone is the answer and tbh the small amount call waiting costs is well worth it to keep blood pressure down.

Re: Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned.....

We get them here to Art but I have the upper hand me no comprendo Espaniol usually works.it's the ones from Africa called Nigel that puzzle me