Spam phone calls

[karen2205]

Arrrgh - one on Tuesday, where I said 'This telephone number is registered with the Telephone Preference Service. What on earth do you think you're doing calling it. I'm at work' and she hung up.

Presumably, one on Wednesday - I was on the phone to a client so I just pressed the off button on my phone - whoever it was doesn't appear to have left a voice mail.

Another one today - started something like 'I'm foo, calling from mobile phone specialists and how are you today?' - I was starting to be rude when my phone turned itself off due to lack of battery power.

I'm pretty certain that it's the same company all three days. Not sure what I can do about it until I can get a proper company name out of them. Googling for 'mobile phone specialists' doesn't bring up anything useful. I wish there was something mean and nasty I could do to companies like this. Or I could just be ruler of the universe and ban all unsolicited commercial calls.

Comments

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

At work I've taken to replying that I'm terribly sorry but we don't use X in this office, but thankyou for calling. Where X may be gas, water, electricity (when I add that "the office manager is allergic to it") when I can manage a straight face, it's also what I claim about telephones. I did nearly crack last summer when telling an air conditioning sales caller that it was good of him to call but we didn't have air in our office though.

[karen2205]

*giggles* - a colleague of mine is very good at being rude to sales people who call us at work and she enjoys doing that so we leave her to it.

[barakta]

Ask for their company registration number as in that what they're registered under as a 'primary key' at Company's house. Legally they have to provide it. If they refuse then they are obviously dodgy and you probably can't get them to stop calling you other than by threatening to report them to OfCom.

[karen2205]

Yeah, I'd have done that today if my phone hadn't turned itself off in the middle of the call - once I've got their details I can report them to the TPS people or I can do evil things like requiring them to provide me with all the data they hold on me under the Data Protection Act so I can then require them to remove that data/correct the record and work out where they got my number from so I can be rude to the company that sold it to them.

[barakta]

The difficulty is getting them to provide enough information for you to do this. Often their staff are trained to refuse to provide the information, going so far as to hang up or delay you when you ask for the details. If you can't get their accurate details and correct company name, they can call you as much as you like and the TPS can't do anything about it, OfCom won't do anything about it and no one will prosecute them for failing to provide info via DPA because none of the laws around this have any teeth.

I don't answer unrecognised or withheld numbers at all, but that's not a viable solution if you use the phone heavily for personal or business reasons.

[karen2205]

I might try subterfuge along the lines of 'OK, this isn't my phone, it's my boss's and I'm just answering it while she's on another call. Could I have your name and telephone number so she can call you back?' or get a colleague to do similar.

I could always get a whistle out and blow it down the phone line.

Assuming I can get a name out of them, I can create merry havoc using the DPA - the Information Commissioner doesn't have very many teeth, but I can enforce my rights in the County Court. If it reaches the stage of daily calls, then the cost/benefit analysis of starting proceedings will start to look favourable.

As a matter of principle I answer all telephone calls on the basis that I shouldn't have to deprive genuine callers of the ability to contact me simply in order to avoid companies trying to sell me things.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I could always get a whistle out and blow it down the phone line.

Remember that the person on the other end of the line is probably some poor sod being paid minimum wage to do a job they hate. Deafening them or giving them abuse is not best. I know someone who always says yes to everything; the result is that the bottom-level guy gets their commission, and she gets called back by someone higher-up - who gets told what she really thinks.

[karen2205]

*nods* - I wasn't intending to deafen, but to shock/surprise them into going away.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Start by ignoring the law - I know, it's your job to imagine that the law applies to everyone - but no-one else in this nasty little interaction considers themselves bound by the law and consider that there are four parties here: you, the sales company, the phone company, and the regulator.

Start by considering the pivotal player, the phone company.

They measure who is most important to them: an individual or small company who uses the phone a bit, or an on-the-phone-all-day telesales company who pay them tens of thousands of pounds in call charges every fiscal quarter.

Who do you think matters more?

The telecomms providers do not give a toss about you. And no, you're not a part of a wider 'public' because there's no way that you will ever aggregate your leverage as a collective stream of revenue that far exceeds the telesales income. You are small and isolated and you do not matter.

There is, in theory, a 'public interest' but the telecomms regulator (and the data protection registrar) who are in theory our appointed representatives have shown a total lack of interest in standing up for our rights against intrusive interruptions from the marketers and salesmen and even - on occasions - outright fraudsters. Bluntly, there is no such thing as 'the public' - just lots of little people who do not matter and a privileged élite of profitable telesales fee-payers.

I will point out that really big companies - big enough to negotiate their contracts, and even bigger users of their telecomms than tele-salesmen - are totally, utterly we'll-sack-you-if-you-call-them off-limits to the sales reps. Some customers are more valuable to the telecomms providers than a little firm of lawyers in a market town.

So what can you actually do?

Log the calls. Look up the definition of 'harassment' and contact the police when (or if) the frequency of calls exceed the threshold. Get your local authority's Trading Standards office involved, because the Telesales Rep's refusal to identify themselves and the company they represent is something that the TSO can and will regard as actionable - remember, this is a local authority employee who has your interests in mind, not a toothless regulator who is to all intents and purposes a servant of a telecomms giant who profits from having you called all day by salesmen.

Finally, capture anything that can be classified as abusive, as misrepresentation, or fraudulent. That, and the charge of harassment, are the means to get the telesales company disconnected and - if the telecomms provider try to shield them by (say) withholding the number - you have an even chance of naming them as accessories, or 'for aiding and abetting', with the threat of having named executives or managers handcuffed and led out of the building to face criminal charges.

You need damned unpleasant threats to make any headway against your telecomms monopolist and their most profitable customers. In all likelihood, the best you'll get is some assurance that they'll never phone you again, and the certain knowledge that they will carry on abusing and harassing (or even actively deceiving and defrauding) everyone else who ever picks up the telephone during the working day. And there will still be companies, new to the market - or reformed from older players who dissolved when too many people got effective Do-Not-Call orders - who will call you in the knowledge that it's still a profitable strategy until you tell them to stop.

Yes, I've worked in this industry. I'm not proud of it.

I am, of course, entirely unqualified to offer advice on any legal matter and you should consider this a personal opinion that a reasonable person would find interesting in a social conversation but in no wise any substitute for seeking the advice of a solicitor or barrister.

[karen2205]

I think you've missed the point.

These are calls coming through to my personal mobile, not to the work number. We get occasional spam calls at work and a colleague deals with them very effectively.

There is no point in contacting Trading Standards or the police or anyone else until I find out who is making these calls - what can *anyone* do when all I can tell them is that I'm receiving calls from a withheld number?

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

It's on your personal mobile?

Contact your mobile provider immediately: unsolicited calls to an unlisted number are - as far as I recall - against the OFTEL code of practice and may actually be illegal. At the very least, the number has been obtained illegally although pigs will fly before the Data Protection Registrar ever takes effective action against that particular breach of the Data Protection Act.

Your provider may, of course, refuse - and probably will - but now you've got something to take to Trading Standards. Or to the police, if the level of calls constitutes harassment. At this stage, it's the telecomms provider who's your target - and a reasonable one, because they are aiding and abetting the telesales companies, and profiting hansomely for doing so.