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)