Category: Cold Calls

Dealing with telephone cold callers

Nuisance Caller Prosecuted

Louis Kidd, 27, lives at home with his mother in Brighton but was the owner of Prodial – a company responsible for 46 million nuisance phone calls in the UK about PPI (Payment Protection Insurance).

Prodial’s computer systems would dial numbers and play a recorded message about claiming PPI. Anyone who responded would have their details sold on to Claims Management companies.

The automated calls, dialled from a computer server in the south east of England, hit homes across Britain at the rate of over 330,000 a day, at all times of the day and night between January 20 and August 21, 2015.

Complainants said they were called repeatedly and often there was no way to opt out even for people who had never had PPI.

The Information Commissioners Office estimated that Prodial was making as much as £100,000 per month and described the operation as ‘one of the worst cases’ they had ever come across.

The regulator has ordered Prodial to pay a £350,000 fine but the company was wound up before the prosecution and has no assets left. Liquidators are trying to determine where the money has disappeared to.

Previous Companies

Mr Kidd and Mr Carrington (his business partner)  both worked previously at Italk Affiliate Telecommunications, which is itself under investigation by the ICO for making between four million and six million calls a day using similar,  technology to Prodial.

Italk was raided by the ICO in March last year and faces a possible maximum fine of £500,000. By then, Mr Kidd and Mr Carrington had jumped ship.

There appears to be a group of people who know how to abuse the system and some have got away with it for a long time as this has happened with other companies as well.

The Result

Prodial has been fined and is out of business, but the people responsible are free to open more companies and able do the same thing again.

“There is a group of people who know how to abuse the system and some have got away with it for longer than others,” said a source familiar with the investigation.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

Joanne Has a Persistent Cold Caller

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Joanne isn’t bothered by scam and spam emails – just presses delete for anything at all dodgy.

And she has fun with the Microsoft support scam phone calls that have been happening a lot recently.

Joanne says “With ‘Microsoft’ scam calls I tend to feign interest. I go along with what they’re saying, let them deliver their speech and then say ‘Oh, I don’t have a pc’.  Then they hang up, which I find amusing”.

But she has had problems with a very determined cold caller – Zenith Windows.

Constant calls annoyed Joanne and no amount of explaining she wasn’t interested would put them off. She tried a high pitched whistle – still they called.

She threatened to report them for harrassment – no effect.

She threatened a solicitor’s letter – still they called.

She complained to their head office – no change.

When she moved house, she assumed that would be the end of Zenith calls, but they tracked her down through a previous employer.

Fortunately  for Joanne, her ex employer realised the situation and denied knowing Joanne.

When does cold calling become harassment?
When does cold calling become threatening behaviour?

Not good.

Julie Deals With Cold Callers By Being Caring

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Julie is a committed Christian and does not want to make life difficult for cold callers.

Her natural response to such callers is to talk with them.

After their opening pitch, she asks something such as

“I’m curious, why did you choose this job?

Or “Shame, it must be really hard calling people up with a marketing script all day long”

And she is genuinely interested in the answers.

They do tend to end the call but if they stay on and start to talk then Julie takes the opportunity to tell them about her Christian beliefs and how that affects her life.

When busy, Julie does just say No to callers and puts the phone down as most people do, but that doesn’t get your number taken off their calling lists so you will get more calls.

Harry Bombards The Cold Caller With Questions

Confused Cold Caller

Harry didn’t like being pestered by cold callers and didn’t like being asked lots of irrelevant questions.

And he figured the cold callers wouldn’t like it either.

So, as soon as they started into their scripted questions, he bombarded them with his own questions.

“Who are you”

“Why are you phoning me?”

“How did you get my phone number?”

“Why are you wasting my time?”

“Who said you could phone me?”

“Why should I answer your questions?”

“Who told you to phone me?”

The cold callers usually recognise they are losing this battle and give up.

Pete Deals With Cold Callers

Confused Cold Caller

Guest post by W.

W. says her boss Pete doesn’t take to cold callers wasting his time.

For example:-

A call from someone claiming to be in computer support:  I want to talk with you about your computer.

Pete: No. I don’t want to talk to you about my computer. Goodbye.

A minute later, another caller from the same company: My colleague just phoned to talk with you about your computer

Pete: Your colleague obviously doesn’t understand English –I said NO! What part of NO doesn’t he get? and slammed the phone down.

Pete’s philosophy is don’t waste time on these callers.

Another time he told a caller to stop wasting his time and she told him to be more polite.

Pete said’ Alright I’ll be polite – please bleep off”

Another time, Pete wanted to have more fun and started a sales pitch on selling the caller life insurance. That really confused the caller.

Don’t waste your time on theses callers unless you want to have fun confusing them.

Valerie Deals with Cold Callers

Confused Cold Caller

A guest post by Valerie.

Valerie says she got fed up with cold callers years ago and signed up for the Telephone Preference Service. This led to a big reduction in the number of calls but she still does receive them.

They seem to call her mostly around 6 pm – they wait till they think you’re home from work and some even call her around 8 am when she’s having breakfast. She had three callers in one afternoon.

Valerie pays the extra money each month for caller Id on her phone so she can see who’s calling.

For cold callers, she keeps a very loud whistle by the phone and if it’s a cold caller they get a good blast of that.

If the whistle isn’t to hand, then she simply says ‘I’ll just get Mrs J.. for you’ and leaves the phone off the hook so it continues to cost the caller.

Cold callers can be a real nuisance, but I bet Valerie doesn’t get the same caller twice.