Nuisance Calls

As a regular user of the technical support forums I could not find a more suitable place to post this.

Moderators please move if inappropriate.

I have received numerous calls, daily, weekly and even at night from an outfit claiming to 'block' nuisance calls for a fee. It started months ago at £89.99 and has now been reduced to £2.99. WOW, a bargain?

They keep pestering me, even offering a 'free' call blocker. For a slight hint they seem to be based in Bournemouth

I'm registered with TPS (useless) and they claim their service is better. They operate under numerous 'guises' and even more contact numbers.

All the research I have done suggests they are scammers, only interested in getting my bank details.

Is there any way to get rid of these calls?

Rgds

Any details - company name, directors names, telephone numbers?

A well know scam. There are various companies who claim to offer a service 'better' than TPS but at a cost, just do a web search. Stay well clear of them.

My daughter has recently cut her nuisance calls to zero after buying a set of BT phones.
They work best if you take the CLI add-on from your telephone provider I understand.

In reply to a post by dsergeant:

A well know scam. There are various companies who claim to offer a service 'better' than TPS but at a cost, just do a web search.

I could only find this http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/news1.html

I'm not sure if it appropriate/legal/slanderous to post this info in a public forum.

Reverse lookup, or such that I can do, on the calling numbers gives legitimate, registered company names. They seem to have numerous numbers, all of which fail to resolve. Very sophisticated.

The only clue I can give is that the male/female callers are very polite, very grammatically correct and, I suspect well educated. They speak QRE.

Without giving too much away you could try searching on Wesse? Hous? Bournemouth, fraud and see what that yields.

I have no idea how they found enough information to attack my debit card or my ex-directory number but they did. Needless to say the card is now cancelled and my bank will give a refund, subject to further information.

If one of the moderators has better look-up capabilities I can PM a number.

Yep... been there done that.

There was a piece about call blocker nuisance calls on yesterday's BBC You and Yours, which should still be accessible via the BBC Radio 4 web site. The piece featured a interview with the Information Commissioner.

I was inundated with calls almost 24/7, the TPS is used by rogues as it gives them a nice list of known live numbers.

@ 3 years ago I bought a trueCall unit , I now never get any calls that I don't want, it is awesome.

https://www.truecall.co.uk/home.aspx

Blocker, call recorder, can list all in/out calls for evidence and bill checking ,plus answer phone all in one unit.

Black/white list numbers, intercepts and answers calls for you,numerous ways to deal with calls, you can even give blacklisted calls the number unobtainable tone, that trick gets your number off the live targets list very quickly ))

Have to say, it is the best purchase I made in years.

In reply to a post by Kaoshan:

Reverse lookup, or such that I can do, on the calling numbers gives legitimate, registered company names. They seem to have numerous numbers, all of which fail to resolve. Very sophisticated.

Uh?

If they give legitimate customer names, what is failing to resolve? Other than the fact they are presumably spoofed.

Get one of these its powered by trucall stopped all ppi calls , international, withheld, etc

BT 8500 Digital Telephone and Answering Machine with Advanced Call Blocker, Twin DECT
49.99
http://www.johnlewis.com/bt-8500-digital-telephone-a...

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-May-15 19:45:01)

Why tell me that? Who was it intended for?

Pardon me for being cynical but your post recommending a particular product could be seen as a variation on the theme being complained about in this thread.

If you have been following the BT forums you will have seen the call blocking using devices like is no good at the moment as BT's caller id system is broken and has been for months.

Heh!

I'm trying to think of any other way of giving a really useful answer to:-

In reply to a post by Kaoshan:

Is there any way to get rid of these calls?

What's broken about BT Caller ID? Mine seems to work fine.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

Pardon me for being cynical but your post recommending a particular product could be seen as a variation on the theme being complained about in this thread.

How, when it is a known,proven and approved system recommended by Which and Age Concern et al.


The theme is about scammers and nuisance calls, the product I mentioned stops them .

In reply to a post by gomezz:

If you have been following the BT forums you will have seen the call blocking using devices like is no good at the moment as BT's caller id system is broken and has been for months.

Nonsense, the system works perfectly as does caller ID.

It's working fine for me, never gives a problem.

Not working for me (since last October) nor for many others. Hence it is broken albeit not totally broken.

A reassuring link to those reputable references would have served to allay the fears of the suspicious amongst us. I, for one, thought their web site looked distinctly dodgy.

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

I was inundated with calls almost 24/7, the TPS is used by rogues as it gives them a nice list of known live numbers.

Why do you and others keep on repeating this rubbish?
I've been registered with the TPS for over a decade and I've had the same number here for umpteen decades - which is ex-directory.
I get next to NO scam/silent/marketing/sale/whatever calls.
By that I mean probably 1 call every 4 to 6 months as a maximum, and I have no idea when the last one was - might well have been last year.

Ive signed up to TPS. Dont get many spam calls, but got one other day in which the person on the other end had my full name, and said i was involved in a car accident according to her records

Said i dont own a car so no i wasnt. TPS is great but clearly some company i have dealings with have sold my details and i dont think TPS can stop that

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 27-May-15 21:37:37)

Thanks https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.732905,-1.863274,3...

Well I listened to the programme, thank you.

IME the change in the law has lead to a reduction in the number of calls that I get. I now use VOIP and my Cisco SPA112 routes all International and number withheld calls to voicemail. My phone is now pleasantly quiet.

In reply to a post by zom22:

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

I was inundated with calls almost 24/7, the TPS is used by rogues as it gives them a nice list of known live numbers.

Why do you and others keep on repeating this rubbish?
I've been registered with the TPS for over a decade and I've had the same number here for umpteen decades - which is ex-directory.
I get next to NO scam/silent/marketing/sale/whatever calls.
By that I mean probably 1 call every 4 to 6 months as a maximum, and I have no idea when the last one was - might well have been last year.

What rubbish? It is fact, just because you are lucky enough not to have been continually disturbed by cold calls from all over the world does not make others wrong, or your stupid obnoxious attitude right.

There are 100,000's of complaints each month about these calls, elderly people are preyed upon every day of the week.

I have had TPS for landline and mobile ever since the service started , fact is it does nothing to deter the scum that couldn't give a damn about rules/laws.

FACT , I was receiving multiple unsolicited calls every day, calls from overseas at midnight and the early hours of the morning .......

The latest problem is accident helplines calling mobiles registered on the TPS, they insist that "Janet" called them and they are returning the call, ( add any name you like, ) there are 1000's of complaints about the tactic .

And for your education , the TPS themselves acknowledge that there is a problem.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/stillgetcalls.html

http://conversation.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/nuis...

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/feb/16/nuisanc...

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-May-15 06:21:00)

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

In reply to a post by zom22:

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

I was inundated with calls almost 24/7, the TPS is used by rogues as it gives them a nice list of known live numbers.

Why do you and others keep on repeating this rubbish?
I've been registered with the TPS for over a decade and I've had the same number here for umpteen decades - which is ex-directory.
I get next to NO scam/silent/marketing/sale/whatever calls.
By that I mean probably 1 call every 4 to 6 months as a maximum, and I have no idea when the last one was - might well have been last year.

What rubbish? It is fact, just because you are lucky enough not to have been continually disturbed by cold calls from all over the world does not make others wrong, or your stupid obnoxious attitude right.

There are 100,000's of complaints each month about these calls, elderly people are preyed upon every day of the week.

I have had TPS for landline and mobile ever since the service started , fact is it does nothing to deter the scum that couldn't give a damn about rules/laws.

FACT , I was receiving multiple unsolicited calls every day, calls from overseas at midnight and the early hours of the morning .......

The latest problem is accident helplines calling mobiles registered on the TPS, they insist that "Janet" called them and they are returning the call, ( add any name you like, ) there are 1000's of complaints about the tactic .

And for your education , the TPS themselves acknowledge that there is a problem.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/stillgetcalls.html

http://conversation.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/nuis...

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/feb/16/nuisanc...

Thank you for saving my time to reply in a similar vein.

Got my second "you have had an accident call". Quoted my full name. Do TPS do anything if you report it to them as this is clearly illegal what they're doing

If it's a UK based company and you haven't somehow agreed they can contact you then the regulator can potentially do something. If they aren't UK based or are an affiliate of a company where you might have forgotten to tick the box for no marketing then they wouldn't be able to do anything.

Company based in Livepool. Well known it seems for this stuff. Do they just ask of you have had an accident on the slim chance someone says yes? As clearly it arent based on an actual accident

In reply to a post by Kaoshan:

The only clue I can give is that the male/female callers are very polite, very grammatically correct and, I suspect well educated.

Probably an Indian call centre then. You don't get that kind of quality from home grown talent

In reply to a post by gomezz:

If you have been following the BT forums you will have seen the call blocking using devices like is no good at the moment as BT's caller id system is broken and has been for months.

Rubbish. I have the TrueCall unit and it's working fine (as it has been for over a year now). What is being claimed about BT's Caller ID? I'm pretty sure if it was broken there'd have been a lot of complaints about it.

I have similar experience to zom22 - zero spam calls. The last one I can remember was a year or two ago.

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

I have had TPS for landline and mobile ever since the service started , fact is it does nothing to deter the scum that couldn't give a damn about rules/laws.

Although I have been registered with TPS for some I did continue to receive some unwanted calls. I would say that the recent change in the law has made a difference.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Got my second "you have had an accident call". Quoted my full name. Do TPS do anything if you report it to them as this is clearly illegal what they're doing

Report the calls to ICO, they have the teeth to do something about it. https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/calls/

The thing is TPS is used by UK companies that like to abide by the law and have standards, TPS does nothing to stop calls from overseas and from companies that could not care any less.

Now that the law has changed companies that don't abide by the TPS are likely to get fined, and hopefully will stop being a nuisance. That can include UK based companies that use foreign call centres. My impression is that the change in the law is working.

I now route all foreign and number withheld calls to voicemail.

It may be that the TPS List gives them access to BOTH "Live Numbers" and to the (First) NAMES.

Does anyone actually know how the TPS information is passed on to Companies, whether the "official" version does contain Names as well as Numbers?

In that case, then the Names may be from "leaks" within TPS.


Otherwise apart from the few seconds for an (automated) Dialler to ring any number, detect that there is no Active Line and thus move on to the next is minimal - so little need to know individual specific Phone Numbers.

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-May-15 07:35:41)

These people, they call themselves Stopthesecalls, have been phoning me twice a week for the last month, aggressively trying to get my bank details.

They always call from different numbers and seem to have a very small number of staff. One guy who uses three different names but alway has the same voice is the sales droid. When he finishes his script he informs me his supervisor will call with further details. After about thirty minutes I get a call from the 'supervisor'. What a surprise... same voice and yet another name!

They are now trying a different method to get my details usinhg a female called Tara. She starts off politely but becomes more and more abusive as I refuse to give any details. When I asked her for either a contact address or phone number she swore and hung up.

Thanks for the PMs. I'll look into the suggestions.

Edited by deleted (Thu 25-Jun-15 07:49:06)

I can offer no solutions to this. All I will say is - I, personally, am glad we are now living in a time where landlines are not a necessity any more, and mobiles have "do not disturb" features. I have no phone attached to my landline at home, and keep my mobile on "do not disturb" much of the time. If someone genuinely wants to speak with me, they normally leave a message. If not, then I don't call them back.

You could always do what my parents still do - as soon as they pick up the phone and can tell it is a marketing call, they put the phone down, but not on the hook - they leave it off the hook, so who ever wants to talk to themselves can continue to do so. Remember, they are paying for the call. I also suspect that doing this means even if they hang up their side, depending on how the phone system works these days (someone in the know could confirm this for me), it means they can't terminate the call either and move onto calling someone else.

Do this a few times and I guarantee you they will stop calling as it will be wasting not only their time but also their money.

Final option is that TrueCall blocker which was on Dragon's Den a while ago. You can either buy one of these units as a stand-alone entity or some phone manufactures have taken the technology and built it into their phones directly (check out some of the modern cordless BT landline phones that are available).

Edited by deleted (Thu 25-Jun-15 09:03:15)

In reply to a post by mixt:

I can offer no solutions to this. All I will say is - I, personally, am glad we are now living in a time where landlines are not a necessity any more, and mobiles have "do not disturb" features. I have no phone attached to my landline at home, and keep my mobile on "do not disturb" much of the time. If someone genuinely wants to speak with me, they normally leave a message. If not, then I don't call them back.

You could always do what my parents still do - as soon as they pick up the phone and can tell it is a marketing call, they put the phone down, but not on the hook - they leave it off the hook, so who ever wants to talk to themselves can continue to do so. Remember, they are paying for the call. I also suspect that doing this means even if they hang up their side, depending on how the phone system works these days (someone in the know could confirm this for me), it means they can't terminate the call either and move onto calling someone else.

Do this a few times and I guarantee you they will stop calling as it will be wasting not only their time but also their money.

Final option is that TrueCall blocker which was on Dragon's Den a while ago. You can either buy one of these units as a stand-alone entity or some phone manufactures have taken the technology and built it into their phones directly (check out some of the modern cordless BT landline phones that are available).

This is the phone you are referring to and it works perfectly at stopping these nuisance calls.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BT8500-Advanced-Blocker-Cord...

In reply to a post by mixt:

I can offer no solutions to this. All I will say is - I, personally, am glad we are now living in a time where landlines are not a necessity any more,

Unfortunately this is not always the case. I live in a rural area where there is no mobile signal in the house or in the street outside. If I walk a couple of hundred yards up the street I can occasionally get one bar.

A landline is a necessity for myself and my wife.

I keep an answerphone plugged into my landline. My OGM gives my first name (to re-assure genuine callers they have the right number) then asks they either call my mobile or leave a message. Needless to say I don't actually tell them what my mobile number is as if they are a genuine caller they will already know it.

Yup, that's them. Thanks for the link!

Can still be made to work by setting up mobile to redirect to landline if out of range. So you get the second call and you can guess they called the mobile.

Also worth getting hold of a free SIM to check coverage from the competing networks

Failing that, a modern iPhone with WiFi calling on someone like EE would ring through to the mobile when on your home Wi-Fi network.

Only blocks ten numbers - get Truecall proper! http://www.truecall.co.uk/home.aspx

Personally I have Panasonic DECT phones with call blocking, max 30 numbers. But I recently looked at the BT6500 and they block numbers using TruCall technology - not just 10 like some older BT phones.

Starting to get more telemarking calls recently. Does that mean that some website/company have sold my details on recently or could they have got my details from ages ago?

I assume someone has sold my name and telephone number recently due to the sudden increase in calls, but not sure if thats how it works. Cant think of any company or website where i have input my name and phone number in recently

Edited by bobble_bob (Thu 25-Jun-15 13:32:56)

In reply to a post by professor973:

Only blocks ten numbers

That model allows for 1000 numbers to be blocked.

I would think that is more than enough to deal with even the most persistent number switching cold callers.

In reply to a post by mixt:

I also suspect that doing this means even if they hang up their side, depending on how the phone system works these days (someone in the know could confirm this for me), it means they can't terminate the call either and move onto calling someone else.

No, the originator of a call can always terminate it immediately by hanging up. It is the recipient that cannot.

In reply to a post by kasg:

No, the originator of a call can always terminate it immediately by hanging up. It is the recipient that cannot.

Sadly true - wouldn't that be fun if you could tie up their lines for them 8^)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Also worth getting hold of a free SIM to check coverage from the competing networks

Tried all the major providers that (allegedly) provide a service in this area to no avail.

A bit ridiculous that I'm only seventeen miles from the centre of Glasgow and there is no mobile service.

Problem seems to be that the area is low lying and is surrounded by higher ground which is mostly basalt rock. The emergency services also have trouble with their radios.

In reply to a post by kasg:

No, the originator of a call can always terminate it immediately by hanging up. It is the recipient that cannot.

Thanks for clarifying. Shame. Well, I guess the upside of that is, if you leave your phone off the hook, they can't call you back for a while. The downside is nobody else can call you either.

As long as the whistle doesn't get on your nerves.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/03/spam-...

What do you know ... AGurnAid article that not news.