scammers programme on Wednesday night

My mobile automatically informs me the call could be spam.

@chicken - Next time tell him "Yes, I know."

I too have the clever BT phones that only allow callers on my contact list or preciously approved callers through. Others are asked to give their name which is relayed to me and I can choose whether to accept or reject.

However, having had a really good laugh this morning - which I needed - I'm feeling quite jealous. I like the idea of passing the time honing my dramatic skills!

Jennil23 thank you so much. I haven't laughed so much in months. A real tonic.

I get calls all the time for a certain person who isn't me and who I don't know. It seems that they've possibly made up a number and that number is mine!

I once went through all the details of an imaginary car accident until the point where I added in the green aliens who had caused it by parking their spaceship in the middle of the road.

Infoman, don't think that the scammers will not find you, even if you don't give your number away. Many use electronic phone number generators so it wil dial 01742 123456 then 01742 123457 and so on until it hits a real number.
If I am not busy I will try to keep the scammer on the line as long as possible, asking daft questions and pretending to be a gullible old lady. At least I am preventing them for making their next call!

Jennil23 I love the one about your accident. I might try that sometime.

I love to wind them up and keep them on the line to waste their time but if I'm too busy I tell them that since GDPR they are breaking the law calling me without my permission and put the phone down.

I don't have a whistle by my phone but on one occasion, after asking a particular caller to stop calling a number of times, when he called again I screamed as loudly as I could then put the phone down. That stopped him!

Car - no, It wasn't me. Oh no, it must have been my husband. He's taken my car again and you're saying he crashed it, again? That's it - divorce. You must be from a legal place. Do you know any good divorce lawyers?

I have a call blocker on my phone that means that anyone that wants to speak to me has to announce themselves and I can choose to accept it or not. This has stopped the unwanted calls.
I wish that I had had this phone when my dad was still alive - the distress that he had when callers used to ask to speak to my mother after she had died was horrible to see but on the other hand, I had a lot of fun with the scam calls !
Oh for the days when unwanted calls were just someone that wanted to flog you double glazing!

Us old ladies aren't the fools people think we are, are we? My late husband who never swore, changed when he got a scam call and told them to F off. I on the other hand, like many other grans, have some amusement with them. I usually say in a croaky voice, "Are you married then? What's your wife's name? Have you got any children?" regardless of what they are saying. I usually say somewhere in the call "Its so lovely that you called me. Nobody does, and its nice to have a chance to chat..." If I get to say all of these things I have won, but they usually put the phone down before I've got very far.

Espee a woman after my own heart.

These posts have had me in hysterics ! Thankyou to all

I wish I was quick enough to think of good time eating questions! I have had the car crash calls and learned that if I politely ask “Sorry, who was it you wanted to talk to?” They usually hang up. I have a friend who loves to wind them up and her best one was a call asking her to change her phone provider. She kept the call going as long as possible, then in a doddery old lady voice said “but I haven’t got a phone?” There was a long pause then they hung up

Time wasting questions, not eating ??

I always ask each one why they don't get a proper job.

I am not a Welsh speaker but know quite a lot of words due to my Welsh mother. I string them together for scam callers and they ask what language it is and then get another load of nonsense. I can actually say the LanfairPG place name in full and this usually does the trick.

Usually, I just lay the phone on its side without speaking and leave it engaged for an hour or so at their expense and inconvenience. If we all did that, all their phone lines would be tied up constantly! All my friends and family use my mobile number anyway.

Sometimes I like to string them along and tell them I don't even have a phone or that I ran into this stranger's house to answer this one as the door was left open or the house was on fire. I must remember the one about burying the body in the woods after the car accident, that's a good one. There ought to be a book about all these funny excuses.

Love some of your responses to scammers. I don't get that many now but the odd one still gets through. I used to string them along then say things like "can you just hold for a moment, my baby needs feeding" and leave the phone for 10-20 minutes, come back, talk for 30 seconds on my baby's progress from bottle to weaning (I don't have a baby) then say sorry, visitors have just turned up etc...I rarely got second calls and remember one scammer that must've been on hold for over an hour...I started to feel sorry for him so left him 'on hold' again then held a conversation with 'the neighbour who just dropped in' and said something like 'I do hate these scammers - do you put them on hold, waste their time and run their phone bills up too?' - Surprisingly enough he eventually hung up on me, how rude!

I watched a programme a little while ago when some tech-savvy people would hack into the scammers and watch them on their own CCTV, focus on their monitors and ask them why they were Googling information etc...one took over their system completely and even recorded the manager meeting where they discussed the rules for the next scam they intended to use. Great that clever people spend their time to expose the cheats or make life hard for them.

The last one I had that used the 'problem with your internet' type scam I asked him if he would like to hold while I got my Internet specialist husband (I'm not married - my better half was a top net analyst for a large organisation for nearly 20 years) as he might be able to help them solve the problem as it must be at their end...another one who hung up on me and never called back. As I've got older I don't have as much patience - I'd like to still play games with them but admit I've sometimes been very rude after very little prompting...as soon as they say accident (I don't drive), internet problems, banking problems etc I resort to obscenities! I had one persistent caller for about 3 different scams - after the mouthful I blasted at him last time he hasn't called for about a year now - hopefully he's given up and not bothered to sell my number on.

Will probably watch or record that programme as often interesting.

I only have the odd one nowadays when my blocker doesn't function properly. When the caller asks for me, I simply say 'I am her career. Can I help? Gone.......

Simple we don’t answer any number we don’t recognise, I wouldn’t waste my breath on them, and for withheld if it’s anything important then they leave a message

I have a format for dealing with the scammers as I just keep repeating the same one word ‘yes’ to everything, whether appropriate or not. They probably think I’m gaga and delete my details from their data base.
I strangely don’t hear from them again!

I've had the 'been in an accident' call before, strung them along and said yes, I'd like to see about making a claim but before that I would need to check with my sergeant if it was OK to do that, as I'd been driving an unmarked police car at the time. The phone at the other end was put down very quickly, he he!

My now AC worked for a legitimate co. at 16, first job, phone-selling double glazing. A long time ago! Some of those 'jokes' were played, plus lots of swear words, and DC wondered why people were so nasty - 'all people have to do is say no thank you'. The few appointments that were made for a salesperson to visit resulted in a bonus so DC was overjoyed. Scammers are the dregs of humanity but the people on the phones are not the ones to blame. Some of them may even be tax-paying workers doing a pretty thankless job. Call blockers are really useful in reducing the volume of unwanted calls considerably.

Not heard of it recently but about 10 years ago there were companies who cold called folk trying to persuade them to sell their house. A quick sale but well below market value. My dear old Dad who was almost 90 got the call one day. When asked if he’d ever considered selling his house he replied that he had indeed been thinking just that for some time.

The woman spent 15 mins quizzing him about how many bedrooms, type of heating etc. Then said to give him a price she would need to do a home visit and complete the contract.

Dad said he would be more than happy to sell the house to them even though it was considerably less than market value price. Then said “But this needs to be done very discreetly, the landlord will be raging when he finds out I’ve sold his house!