Thanks to a combination of Anonymous Call Rejection and the Telephone Preference Service we’ve remained relatively free of nuisance sales calls. Unfortunately recently the numbers have picked up, firstly regular calls from 0800 183 0142 – many of which are silent, and also quite frequent international calls.
Taking them in reverse, the international calls are a total pain, as they bypass the Anonymous Call Rejection, as international calls don’t have an attached Caller ID details. It is also a pain as we quite legitimately get international calls from friends and family abroad. Having said that, as I mentioned a while back we’ve used Vonage to set up a Medicine Hat phone number, which since it is located in Canada, does get Canadian Caller ID, and even better passes this through when it rings in the UK, so this does mean that we can distinguish between the persistent foreign call centres, and legitimate calls.
The calls from 0800 183 0142 are somewhat more annoying though. The company making the calls RHL Ltd, who run call centres for a number of well known names including Sky, is as far as I am concerned complying with the letter of the Ofcom rules, but not the spirit. They are obliged to offer the freephone number, however, whenever we’ve had a silent call, we’ve dialled back the number, and it just connects to a recorded message apologising for the call, and says that there is nobody available to take the call. However this proves to be a bit of a lie. A little bit of digging on the internet turned up this discussion, which gives another phone number, 0141 272 1105, which was answered immediately – despite the message on the 0800 183 0142 number – and the person I spoke wasn’t in the least surprised when I asked for our number to be removed either. He took our details and the phone number to be removed, and assured us that the number would be removed from the automatic dialler within 24 hours.
The fact is that they are paid to sell, and whatever rubbish the Telemarketing industry may spout, I have yet to meet anybody who actually wants this cold calling – indeed with upwards of 48% of UK land line phone numbers now ex-directory it seems increasingly that we value our privacy on our home phone. If it were easy for people to remove themselves from the list, I imagine they’d have nobody to call, so whilst once you get through they are polite, they don’t make it quite as easy as it could be.
Ultimately what I want on my land line now is a feature I have on my mobile, whereby I can white list numbers – only the numbers I specify can get through, and everybody else has to leave a message. Unfortunately that seems to be a bit of a pipe dream, and it may require some more investigation of the VoIP options before I can get something like that working.
Update: Phoning the Glasgow number (0141 272 1105) rather than the 0800 183 0142 number that RHL put out as their Caller ID number has proved to have sorted the problem for now. We’ve had no more calls from that number. The international calls have also subsided – whether that was as a result of the call to RHL or just coincidence I don’t know. Having said that we have now picked up a cordless phone with built in Caller ID which allows us to not even answer the calls when they ring – even better we can just hit the hang up button and it cuts them straight off without us having to sit through the ringing – phone starts ringing, it’s an international or obvious sales number and we can hang up on them immediately. Lovely. 😀
We have been getting really annoying and pushy phone calls from ‘Select Travel’ despite using the Telephone Preference Service. I pointed out to Select that they should not be phoning us and they claimed that TPS only applied to Sales calls, there’s they say is allowed because it’s a Marketing Call! Grrrrrrrrrrrr
Unfortunately for Select Travel, they are wrong. Under Government legislation introduced on 1st May 1999 and replaced on 11th December 2003 by the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to make unsolicited direct marketing calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls – there is no distinction between sales and marketing calls, it’s any unsolicited call.
Since you know who they are, and I assume also have their phone number, the TPS have a complaints page on their site, which would probably be worthwhile filling in.
Great i just have a call googled it and arrived here .
Helpful to say the least
Cheers Ian
I have just made a complaint to the TPS about Select Travel having received 7 calls over the last three weeks or so. It will be interesting to see what transpires. In case you also need to complain Select Travel is a trading name of Global Holiday Marketing Ltd 6 East Street, Torre, Torquay TQ2 5SD
last 10 days on ex directory landline,keep getting international numbers,due to fault on phone these 2 numbers came up,03313583012 and 923313583012 on mobile bt say from france ,yet try to dial and get nowhere,can anyone help,even ring in the early hours,thank you