Category: Cold Calls

Dealing with telephone cold callers

April 29, 2016

BT Engineer Charges Cold Caller

Richard Herman was plagued by calls from a PPI cold calling company. He asked them to stop calling him but the calls continued. So, next call he warned them that if they called again he would bill them for his time at £10 per minute.

The Nuisance Calls continued and he kept a log and recordings of all Nuisance Calls about PPI received. He informed them that would base his bill for the use of his telephone electricity and time dealing with their calls.

He submitted a bill top the company (PPI Claim line Limited) for £195 which was 19.5 minutes of his time answering and dealing with the unwanted calls.

Even when the company denied making the PPI Nuisance Calls to him it didn’t deter him. He took them to court, but the case didn’t continue.

They settled out of court for £220 and paid him.

Hooray for Richard Herman.

Make them pay for wasting your time.

April 25, 2016

The Missed Call Scam

The Missed call scam is where someone calls you but stops the call too quickly for you to get to the phone. In these cases, some people will call the number back to see who it was and that’s where the scam starts.

The number you call may be a premium rate line or redirected without your knowledge to a premium rate line which can charge up to £4 per minute. Beware of numbers starting with 09 – premium rate.

The call will be answered by an answering machine telling you that you’ve won a prize or any other story just to keep you on the line ticking up the minutes that you will be charged.

There is also a text message version of this scam.

You get a text message from an unknown number but with a friendly tone.

e.g Hi it’s Tony, I’m back in the area and thought we should meet up. Texting or phoning a reply will be charged at premium rate.

Remember, it you don’t recognise the caller then think before returning a call or message and if the number starts with 09 then that’s going to cost up £4 per minute.

Don’t be caught up in this.

April 23, 2016

Update on Time-Wasters

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

Still getting calls from the same stupid PPI chasers. Pathetic. Unfortunately they use a computer to dial and play their message so they can keep on dialling the entire population repeatedly.

A Chinese company HungFung International want us to sell their nit removal combs. But it’s all fake – the supposed email address etc. are all just links to websites they get paid for promoting.

A supposed message from someone on LinkedIn. It’s fake. They copied the format of a real LinkedIn message request just to get us to click on some website that no doubt contains a scam.

Funding Circle offering us a business loan. We’re a volunteer organisation. No loans thank you.

An email proclaiming that Kids Stay Free at the Moon Palace Hotel in Cancun. May be a copy of a real advert for the hotel but sent from a spammer to get us to click on websites they want us to visit.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

April 15, 2016

Annoy Cold Callers by Being Friendly and Questioning

For example:-

Caller: Hello. Is that Mr. …..

Me: What do you want? (in a bored ‘heard it all before’ tone of voice)

Caller: My name is Natasha and I’m calling from Lifestyle Choices. I would just like you to help me please with answers to a few questions. It will only take 2 minutes.

Me: (now sounding friendly) So, you’re Natasha and you’re from Lifestyle Choices. Do you do a lot of surveys Natasha?

Caller: If you could just answer a few questions Sir.

Me: Natasha, Do you work for Lifestyle Choices or are you just contracted to them?

Caller: I work for Lifestyle Choices. If you could answer a few questions Sir.

Me: So, Lifestyle Choices – what do they do.

Caller: Can you answer some questions please Sir.

Me: Of course, after you answer my questions. Now, where was I. Oh Yes, I remember. You were going to tell me about Lifestyle Choices.

Natasha disconnects.

Good riddance to another cold caller.

April 8, 2016

Winifred’s Approach to Cold Callers

Guest post by Winifred
Winifred says When I get a cold call, I say ‘I am not buying anything’.

They usually say ‘I am not selling anything’

So I say, ‘then why are you calling invading my private time. Take me off your list’

One caller was very determined.

I’d told him that I wasn’t buying anything but he persisted and in the end I just put the phone down.

Then he had the cheek to ring back and complain that I was rude to him.

So I said ‘I did not give you my telephone number. I told you I was not interested in anything you had to sell, My home time is very valuable to me. But you would not listen so I put the phone down in hopes that you would finally get the message’

I hope he has got the message.

I might try my cousin’s approach instead. When he gets a cold call, he says ‘just a minute’, puts the phone down and walks away.

This wastes their phone bill and annoys them.

Good.

April 6, 2016

Cold Callers Answer Machine Detection

Even when you’re someone who gets a lot of cold calls, it is very rare to find a cold call on your answer machine. All of the cold calling companies use computers to dial so how do the computers know the call has been answered by an answer machine rather than by a person?

The dialler computers cannot tell exactly when an answer machine answers the call but they use algorithms to make a judgement.

So, what leads the computer to think the call is answered by a machine?

A person tends to answer the phone with Hello then pause or something like “This is the Johnson residence, Fred speaking” then a pause. Whereas an answer machine tends to have a much longer message with no gaps then the pause.
They can detect the sort of background noise associated with tape based answer machines. All modern answer machines are digital – no tape, hence this method doesn’t really work anymore.
Listening for tones or beeps indicating an answer machine.

The dialler computer judges within a few seconds whether the call has been answered by a person and if not then it cuts the line.

These systems make mistakes and are often the cause of why you may get short silent calls.

There are rules they are supposed to follow to ensure no more than 3% of their calls end up in silent calls but whether any of them follow that rule – who knows. Some people say that if you suspect a cold call – then press the # symbol repeatedly and it will screw up the answer machine detection – but I don’t know if that’s true.

If it turns out to be someone you know calling they’ll just assume it was noise on the line and will wait for you to say Hello.