Strange phone call....

I did ask to speak to 'the manager' so after a while another person with an 'impossibletounderstandaccent' came on the phone. And we had the same conversation again [this should be on the 'Groundhog Day' thread]. I'm beginning to enjoy myself....

These Indian callers phoning to tell us about our computer problems, and how they could fix them, are world-wide. Here where I live, in New Zealand, they come almost routinely. Maddening! I have tried various ways of getting rid of them from becoming severely annoyed to terminating the conversation right at the start, but still the calls come. I guess they'll continue while they have people who "fall" for their line of talk.

My sister was being bothered by Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses when she was caring for our mother. One day, she said to one lot 'Do come in, nobody calls since Mum was diagnosed with dementia -I am sure she would enjoy talking to you'. They ran! Perhaps you could say the same on the phone -'Oh I am sure my mother would be interested - you might have to repeat youself a lot, as she has Alzheimer's'.
The only nuisance calls I get are actually quite genuine - for some reason France Telecom have given me the same number as the local camp site - some people do take some convincing , though. I have written to the mairie who are responsible for the site, without reply. I suppose I will have to contact FT.

My DH read on the internet about a man who was reciving 0845 calls up to three to four times a week. He has caller display on his phone, so each 0845 number that calls he adds to his "phone book" on the phone and gives it a name so that when they ring instead of the number showing it shows the name he has attached to that number. One name he used was "tosser" . He knows then to ignore the call.
He gives a different name to each different nuisance phone call.
I have taken it one step further and have added a different ring tone to numbers like this so that when they call I know not to answer.
This can only work if the numbers are not with held.

You can call bar witheld numbers which I've just done after getting so many of these calls.

One claimed to be from 'Microsoft inc' & gave me a great spiel about how my pc had been sending error messages to microsoft & they would sort the problems out if I would just switch on my pc.

I asked him when did Apple computers start sending messages to Microsoft? He was a little lost for words.

A well-known scam, wiccibat and a very good response! Must remember that one, though I don't have a Mac.

Just had a phone call whose number showed up on the caller ID screen as 0123456789. I reckoned that was probably not a genuine number so did not lift the receiver. Instead I Googled it and found that a lot of other people had had one as well. It seems to be a way of calling via the internet or Skype and not revealing your true number, so is a useful way to scam people.

It was also suggested that by answering the call you could then be charged for it.I am glad I ignored it, and suggest you do too.

01234 is bedford area isn't it? But the rest does look a bit of a coincidence!

I am fed up of calls telling me I have not taken up my government home insulation grant. I have the correct amount of lagging in my roof, double glazing and solid stone walls :- no cavity!

I've had 5 calls today from people with a 'foreign' accent. 4 times I put the phone down and the 5th time I told the caller that I'd like to know how they got through to me as I use the Telephone Preference Service. They put the phone down on me.... It looks like there's a spate of these calls happening again.

I had one last week from a man with a very strong Indian accent - I could hardly tell what he was saying - telling me that his company was going to arrange for all the bank charges I had paid over recent years to be reimbursed. I asked him which bank I was with, and he reeled off a list of every UK bank you could think of and said he was empowered to reclaim money from all of them!

I really am getting tired of these scam calls - a gullible person could have just handed out their bank account details and hoped for a mini-windfall. How they expect people to actually understand them in the first place is a mystery to me. If I were working such a scam I'd make sure I employed credible-sounding callers!

The 'caller' reeled off my name and address and then went on to tell me that he was conducting a UK consumer survey. A friend of mine (who isn't at all gullible, usually) received a call from someone describing themselves as Windows Support (or something). They asked her to switch on her computer and after a wee while she saw the cursor moving around. They told her they were rectifying problems that they'd previously identified. They then told her that there were further problems that they could rectify, but she would have to pay for this service and asked for her bank details. By this time, she'd 'cottoned-on' to the fact that it was a scam. She put the phone down and phoned her husband at work, who told her to shut down the computer. No further communications until yesterday, when they tried again.

I bought a new tumble dryer the other week and activated the one year guarantee. Had a phone call from someone today advising me to take out their £6 a month cover in case it breaks down. I pointed out that, as it wasn't all that expensive I'd just buy a new one in a years time if that happened. With hindsight [it's always with hindsight, unfortunately] I should have said 'so, what you're telling me is that I've bought a rubbish tumble dryer from you and I need to cover myself because it's likely to break down; thanks but no thanks!'

An elderly acquaintance of mine fell for that one, green, and thought she was just paying a one-off fee of £60, but they actually took £180!

Can't we do anything about this? Surely granny power could campaign with police, BT,etc:-

Anagram ! I wonder if there IS anything we could do, jeni - although I've heard somewhere that the police can't do anything to stop it.

Lobby?

I'm to bed! I'll have a cognitive period during dormition

I'll go off to bed soon, too - maybe my cognitivity (pedant alert!) might kick in while I'm kipping!

Quite! Goodnight

What I good idea jeni it's about time something was done about these calls.

The trouble is, if they come from overseas call centres (i.e. most of them!) there's nothing that can be done about them....

But surely there's a way of stopping them getting through? It could almost be considered 'abuse/harrasment', couldn't it?

How about using our inventive,imaginative acting skills and pretending we are deaf or daft e.g recite poetry or talk in a foreign language.could have a script ready by the phone to use as soon as we realise it's a nuisance call.
I'm told that hitting the hash key several times quickly deletes your number from their database.

I had an idea, which I aired on a previous thread, that if everyone recorded these conversations,( or said they were recording them if your phone cannot do this), and told the callers in best official voice that the recording would be subjected to voice recognition software and included in a database for future reference, they might be persuaded to believe that they would be recognised and their calls blocked.

It does need a lot of similar responses, though, to get "urban myth" status and reach the perpetrators.

Perhaps it is even possible to really do it, but I can imagine them squawking about their privacy being invaded (tough)