I managed to get one of the MS virus support call gents to call me a Mutha Fkr, he then told me to do one!!

If I am felling playful and someone cold calls and asks for Mr Eskay, I say “hold on, I will just get him”. Stick the phone in the kitchen, shut the door and get on with my life.

Had one call me on my mobile at work, got the old “your computer has a virus” line to with I replied in a very surprised voice ” oh no! Which one”
Cue 45 mins of fun and games of matey thinking he’d hit the jackpot for a 10,000 user windows based network with a retard sysadmin.

Shame he hung up in the end, I was having great fun!

but why not just put the phone down?

Because these are not salesman, they are trying to steal from you. They need to be discouraged.

but why not just put the phone down?

And then they phone back demanding to know if you just hung up on them, as one recently did to me. I guess that bit got missed.
If these scumbags are that damned obdurate, then they clearly have to be discouraged by other, more robust means.

I don’t understand why people get all these calls; we are on TPS and we don’t get any, apart from Safestyle who wanted £8000 to replace our fascias with plastic and we keep telling them they can do it for £400 so they keep ringing back to try to negotiate.

Global – you think they are legit businesses with an up to date copy of the TPS register right next to their handbook on stealing passwords?

Actually I’m not on TPS and I don’t get any.

So they know if it’s a pc or a Mac.

I have an ‘Alt’ key next to ‘Ctrl’ on my Mac.

I don’t get any of these calls either. Are people getting these at work or at home? Where have you all been listing your phone numbers?

We’re on TPS and get plenty – I don’t think scamming people is covered by TPS!

I have a Fn key next to the CTRL key on my PC (there is another one the other side as well 😉 )

we are on TPS and we don’t get any

Thats completely coincidental

I have a Fn key next to the CTRL key on my PC

Yep, have one of those too.

I had someone try the Dyson scam a while ago. After 10 minutes or so I gave her a piece of my mind and put the phone down, he called back and told me off for being rude to her.

It did make me wonder if she even knew she was part of a scam or not

I like the word ‘clot’. I will use it extensively on nuisance callers of all types from now on. 😀

My father got a call from some guy asking about if he was having problems with his windows, he replied they were fine as they’d only recently been fitted………it got quite surreal as my father had no idea the other guy was talking about computers and the guy didn’t seem to comprehend my father didn’t have a pc.

We have the landline phone unplugged now, it’s the only way to avoid these sharks.
TPS makes no difference.
Blow away on those whistles…

I don’t get any of these calls either. Are people getting these at work or at home? Where have you all been listing your phone numbers?

At home, TPS listed, and on my mobile, which is also TPS listed. TPS is toothless, there’s bugger-all deterrent, so it’s ignored.
It’s getting calls on my mobile that really pisses me off, but there’s nothing I can do until next month when new laws that allow customers to only need to register one call that has caused annoyance come into effect.
At the moment it needs multiple complaints of distress being caused.
There are various places I give my mobile number to, like ticket agencies, and places I’ve bought stuff from, so I can receive text messages alerting me to delivery times, or cancellations, but most say they don’t pass on details.
The fact I’ve been getting insurance claim calls indicates they’re the culprits who’ve sold on my details, and once into the system, you’re pretty much stuffed, because those details keep getting sold all over the industry.
This is really prevalent in charity mailings, I have access to the database for each of our charity clients, for ‘quickflagging’; updating the database when I get back ‘goneaways’, ‘deceased’ or ‘RTS’, (return to sender) mail.
There is one specific charity, who’s database is totally messed up, I sometimes get several items with the same name and address, and when I’ve checked, ive found as many as eleven entries for one person, with slight variations, and I also get mail complaining that the person named at that address either died or moved four, five, ten, even twenty years before.
The updated database is sent back to the client, so those names shouldn’t get anymore mail; however, over time the number of names available to the charity drops off, so they buy in new lists, which go out as a ‘cold mailing’ and there’s no guarantee that many of those names I’ve deleted won’t magically reappear on the new lists.
On some cold mailings I get significant, and I really mean significant numbers returned, but any positive returns with payments make up for any other shortfall.
This is what makes up your junkmail, the same basic principle applies with all the crap over the phone.
It’s pernicious, annoying, and bloody difficult to get rid of.
At least with an envelope throught the door you can scribble over the address, write ‘RTS’ on it, and shove it back in a post box, and it’ll get seen at the mailing house, and hopefully the database updated. Hopefully, if they’re doing their job properly.
With phone calls, there’s no real way you can know if your name’s been taken off. We do have our own internal call centre for our charity clients, I must try to remember and ask how they deal with people who don’t want any more calls; I’d guess they do the same as I do, and flag the name on the database.
Sorry this has been a bit longwinded, but until I started doing what I do now, I had no idea how the system functioned, I’d just see tens, hundreds of thousands of letters mailed out, sometimes a million or more, and that’s it.
It helps to know a bit about what’s behind all this stuff.