Mysterious Phone Calls....

Good morning everyone

I wonder if anyone can help us with a problem with have with our land line phone.Since the start of the New Year we keep having our phone ringing several times either during the day or in the evening.(Never overnight)I made the mistake at the start and picked up the phone and said "Hello"(We never give out our number whenever anyone rings)only to have the phone call cut off.I thought it a bit strange then just thought someone must have got the wrong number

Anyway since then (3months now) we are continually having the phone ring and we don't ever answer it and after a certain number of rings the answering machine lady kicks in and sweetly tells the caller that we are not able to take the phone call and so the call ends.When we press 1471 the lady says the caller withheld their number

We are now getting a bit fed up with it as we keep jumping up thinking it is a proper phone call from family or friends and I keep telling Mr Kandy that we have a stalker

I have suggested to Mr Kandy that he needs to contact BT to see what is going on and would like to know from anyone on here as to whether the number/s can be traced by BT and is there anything we can do to stop it apart from disconnecting our land line phone

Any advice would be most welcome...Thanks

 

Register with the telephone preference service.

 

You really need to contact BT as they offer several such services for thier landlines, here are just some.
Call Protect | Stop Nuisance and Unwanted Calls | BT Landline

If they move on to your mobile phone then thats much easier as you can simply download a call blocker App yourself for free, eg Mr. Number app.

 

BT have a call block, you have to registar it with BT, you can do it online as well

The phone call could be a computer one were there dialing lots of numbers

 

hah, sounds so messed up. I think that contacting BT is a good idea after all

 

Register with telephone preference service, but some companies either ignore this or phone from another country to get around it.

Subscribe to BT's call blocking service, but they (used to?) charge for this service and again it didn't stop international calls.

Purchase a call blocking phone and block every telephone scammer, withheld number, international callers, nuisance callers, relatives you don't like, etc., etc.

Then wonder why your doctor's surgery, relatives living abroad, etc. don't phone you any more, but restricting contact to mobile numbers, email, skype, etc. overcomes that.

Anything that slips through gets a very long, loud blast from the dog whistles we normally always have on us, but this can cause some disruption if out with Dog and receiving a nuisance call.


Today I received an unsolicited text (probably together with 1,000s of others from Googling the content and number) suggesting I could get my debts reduced by 80%. But we don't have any debts, we don't owe anybody anything, no mortgage, loans, etc., so probably a phishing text from a debt management company who take something like a 15% commission for negotiating with creditors, when you can get the same help FOC from the CAB - my wife worked providing free debt management services (but may have changed after funding cuts).

Another issue with that text was the instructions to send various replies which possibly could have attracted premium rate text charges?



The whole issue of 'cold calling' via both landline and mobiles needs sorting out.

 

@Kandy We have this frequently here every couple of weeks and have done for years. We have caller ID and it is always the same Lisbon number which only lets the phone ring 4/5 times but hangs up before the answerphone picks up. It does it 3/4 times during a period of a couple of hours. Years ago when we did answer it was silence so now we ignore it and it goes away for a couple of weeks then repeats. We figure if it is an emergency whoever will leave a message or ring t'other half's mobile which is always near him or attached to him!

 

I get this type of call sometimes, also often get a caller from Bombay wanting me to do a survey, is name is usually Kevin or James.

Being on Virgin I contacted them but they ended up blocking my relatives from USA and OZ so had to give that up.
My mobile rings three times around midday every day with either a mobile number or an 020 number.
I just ignore that one
Personally I think the more technology moves on the more of a problem it creates.

 

If you are a bt customer it's free, think the service is 1572 and you can block calls afterwards online or from your home phone, not sure as to how it works as we don't get many calls like this

 

Don't forget that you can also block uninvited callers at your front door.

We bought a doorbell system many years ago which at the push of a button can restrict the chimes sounding to those people you've issued with keyfobs, when activated the bellpush will not work. It also has a pager for notification of callers when working in the garden.

I'd guess that these days there must be some more up to date system working with an app on smartphones to do all that without the need for any accessories.

P.S. We have a padlock and chain by the front door and put it at low level on our front gate when we see hawkers, jehovah's witnesses, lucky heather sellers, etc., then watch the expression on their faces when they try and call on us from behind our thick Nottingham Lace net curtains.