BT has a range of services to help you block unwanted callers.
Apart from annoying friends and relatives, most of these calls may be from cold callers i.e. marketing and sales calls from companies you have never dealt with.
There are also the scam callers pretending to be from an organisation you may deal with e.g. claiming to be from BT checking on your line and asking you to confirm your details first.
There are malicious callers and there are time wasters.
Telephone Preference Service
First, you should also ask the company to stop calling you and remove you from their calling list.
If that doesn’t work then register with the Telephone Preference Service. Once registered then you should only receive Marketing calls from companies you have agreed can contact you.
Of course, criminals don’t obey these rules.
You can register with the Telephone Preference Service by signing up for BT Privacy at Home at www.bt.com/callingfeatures. We also offer Caller Display which allows you to see the number of the person who’s calling. BT Privacy at Home and Caller Display are both free. You can sign up to them at www.bt.com/myfeatures.
Scam calls
These are commonly made by scammers pretending to be from BT.
They may ask you for personal information or want access to your computer. Don’t be fooled, this is fraud.
For more information, or to report a scam call, visit www.bt.com/help/home/scams/
Remember
- Stay calm and don’t talk to the caller
- Don’t give away any personal information or answer the phone with your name or number
- Keep your answerphone message short and to the point
- Keep note of these calls
If you’re getting abusive, threatening or obscene calls, then you should report them to the police. It will help if you note down the date, time and number that called, along with any other information.
If you’re receiving a lot of malicious calls you can call our Nuisance Call Advice Line on 0800 661 441 (8am to 10pm Monday-Friday and 9am to 6pm on a Saturday).
Calling features that can help:
- BT Call Protect – sends nuisance and unwanted calls to a junk voicemail
- BT Privacy at Home includes registration to the Telephone Preference Service >
- Caller Display – lets you see the number that’s calling you before you answer
- BT 1471 – dial 1471 to check the number that last called you
- Ex-directory – take your number off the telephone directory
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.