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.