I own a small shop and we get repeated calls (5 to 20 times a day) from call centres trying to ultimately get me to change energy providers (usually call starts with ‘good afternoon sir, how are you?). Obviously this is annoying as it’s often when we are serving customers.

Are there any ways of stopping this without changing telephone number?

Most reasent call is from ‘UK energy services’ calling on behalf of national grid with a complaint that we are using too much power!!!

Answering machine with a message to state name and business. Will weed out nuisance callers.

Unfortunately as it’s a shop and I need to take genuine customer calls I can’t do that.

Block all “number withheld” calls will reduce it. does telephone preference service have a buisness service?

the other thing Ihave done is get your name removed from the lists sold by the likes of experian and equifax ( IIRC) I did this years ago by making it clear to those companies that they did not have my permission to use my phone number – data protection act. This reduced the calls significantly

I just tell them that all of our bills are dealt with by the landlord.

Which for us is true. It may not be for you, but it’ll make them go away.

Obviously sign up to TPS, but frankly it’s not perfect, not by any stretch.

There’s a couple of call blocking devices, I used to get dozens of spam calls a day to my mobile, it’s a business mobile – I’m the 3rd owner of it and it’s published online so I’m an easy target – every time I get a nuisance call I block it – I must have hundreds in there. Again, it’s not perfect – some of the sods have multiple outgoing numbers, but after 6 months of blocking numbers I’m down to 2/3 nuisance calls a week now.

Already have TPS, I’ll try a call blocking device as they are cheap.

The ‘cailing on behalf of the national grid’ scam passes me off because it’s so obviously fake. The callers are rude, I’m with customers so have to be calm and can’t just hang up on them, and when I make an excuse (usually say ‘please put all correspondence I writing’) and do mange to hang up, they phone back and shout some more!

– Just had the same guy phone 6 times, then my business mobile (on silent) 4 times by an unknown caller – both are advertised on the Internet.

It’s usually a rerouted call through a London based number, this time it was 02081447791.

Who’s your landline provided by? Plenty of operators now have call barring and nuisance call facilities. Have you checked your provider?

e.g. BT Call Protect, Sky Talk Shield, TalkTalk Last Caller Barring

I’ll be on to them next, it’s a bit line but we use Zen as a service provider.

Obviously sign up to TPS, but frankly it’s not perfect, not by any stretch.

When they call you get straight to the point ask them the name of their company, tell them you’re with TPS, that they shouldn’t have called you and you’ll be reporting them to OFCOM and report them.

Yep I do all that but…. They don’t care. It’s Asian call centre(s) rerouted through London numbers.

So have a pretend conversation which finishes with you hanging up on them, or hang up the phone and look puzzled “how strange, he hung up on me”.

Just use a virtual reception service to screen all your calls. Cost from £40 or so a month, they will pick up the phone using your company name, waste time with sales people on your behalf, passing paying customers directly to you.

I’m with customers so have to be calm and can’t just hang up on them

I just hang up, no discussion at all – and tell customers that it was a junk call.

I just hang up, no discussion at all – and tell customers that it was a junk call.

This.

Or just say, “ok that’s great, thanks for letting me know” and hang up.

Are they ringing on behalf of a UK company or is it a scam along the lines of “we can help you change supplier for a fee” then once the fee is paid they disappear?

I just put the phone down on my desk and carry on working but I am “fortunate” to have more than one line.

Are they ringing on behalf of a UK company or is it a scam along the lines of “we can help you change supplier for a fee” then once the fee is paid they disappear?

No idea, I’m guessing that they want as much detail out of you as possible, either for identification theft or so that they can try to change your supplier on your behalf then they claim the fee from the new supplier.

Business Energy Broking seems to be the latest industry for the get rich quick types and various scam artists.

It was bad enough when every man and his dog was trying to ‘monetising their friends’ and talking your ear off about utility whorehouse, now the cold callers are coming at you 24/7.

give out the number of a sex line and tell them to ring the boss on that number.

Project you forgot the words premium rate.

If you recognise the number you could answer the phone with

“Good afternoon monkey boy crematorium you kill ’em we grill ’em”

Honestly if I was a customer in your shop and you were getting nuisance calls while serving customers you’d get nothing but sympathy for telling the caller to go stick their head in a pig. So long as you didn’t swear in front of the kids.

OR

[video]https://youtu.be/3JEUChn0Jq8[/video]

I get rid of ours by telling them we are supplied by the landlord. Please take us off your database. We haven’t had one for a month now.