Yesterday ,I got a Scam phone Call on Our Landline
As I Pressed to listen to the Caller when the Phone Rang .
But I did not Speak or Say hello .
I could hear talking in the Background assumed It was A Call Centre .
Then a well Spoken Asian Lady starting to tell me
" This Is Your Local Energy Saving Company " !!!!!!!!
So I Listened Intently
She Said My Actual
Surname ,Which was a Surprise .
Then Said
" I believe you are the Homeowner "
We are Giving away Free Home Insulation ?
" My A**e ,Pull the other one " I said to Myself .....
I then Got Very Annoyed and Rankled and Vexed
The Cheek off It ,Taking the P*** I said .
As I raised my Voice
I'm Not the Homeowner
As We are Tenents ...
And Asked where did she get Our Phone Number
And Our Name
She Said From their customer Listing .
I said Take Us Offffff
The Calling List ,Immediately ....
And Just to Scare her and her Scamming company Of
I Said The Call was
" Been Monitored and Recorded by Cheshire Police
At the Middlewich Centre "
And you will be tracked and Traced
And Action fraud 🤥
Will contact you for Your Lies and Deceit And Blatant Scams
I would only answer the landline at a certain time when I knew my mum would ring me (we lived 8 time zones apart).
Otherwise I would just pick up the phone and wait for the caller to speak first, usually they hung up.
No one I know would ring me on my landline now that my mum has passed away, and may get rid of it completely in another year or so.
I don't answer calls to my mobile phone numbers unless I know the caller. If it is genuine and urgent, the caller would leave a voicemail for me to pick up.
DK
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Unfortunately many of these scam calls don't come from within the UK, a lot come from India and China. Therefore TPS doesn't apply and they are not in the least concerned about the British police, as UK law doesn't apply where they are coming from.
I have had hundreds of these calls over the past year, so now I don't pick up if I don't recognise the number, unless the caller starts to leave a message, as most genuine callers will. I used to block them, but even that is pointless now as they appear to be able to use any number they like, and rarely use the same one twice. I check every suspicious call I get on "Who Called Me", and usually there are loads of people who have reported that number before me. "Your local Energy Advisor" comes up time and time again, and from numbers supposedly all over Britain. The reality is that they are not from anywhere in Britain at all.
I found that the asian sounding scammer (using an English name) doesn’t like it when you answer in French, which I speak reasonably well! I have a fair bit of German too.
They tend to hang up.
These days if we don't recognise the number on the mobiles it's ignored.
We have answering service if it's important they can leave a message.
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I simply never answer 'unknown number' phone calls, both landline and mobile are allowed to go to answerphone, and inevitably there's never a message left.
I will often check the calling number, and if flagged as a well known scammer, block the number.
I SERIOUSLY p*ssed off my GP surgery at one time when they said they would phone me, and I pointed out that if they hid their calling number (that was their new phone system - NO calling number), they wouldn't reach me, the call would be automatically terminated by my phones that were set to reject anonymous calls, not even a chance to leave a message, and I wouldn't even know they'd phoned!
They were fuming (in that way only a pompous entitled Drs receptionist can be!) that I had the gall to refuse their anonymous calls! - were even less impressed by my parting shot of "if you want to reach me - simple, identify yourselves"
HOW DARE a mere patient dictate to the almighty GP surgery! - I did get my call, from a GP's mobile, not through the main switchboard!
It must have been a disastrous move on their part to call anonymously, as not too long after the switchboard started giving caller ID info!
After listening to The Landline Scam Call
It left me very very Angry .
So I checked the Phone Number Out on
"Who Called Me "
01172055763
It was Highlighted a A Scam
By A Company Purporting to
be
A Green Energy Company
Giving Away Free House Insulation o
Liar Liar Your A**e 😡 Is on Fire 🔥
So I phoned "Action Fraud"
Free phone 03001232040
Waited some time to speak to an Operative .
He Took the Scam Number and all the Relevent Details of What was Said
Also took all my Details
e-mail address , Home phone Number and Mobile Number also
Afterwards I got an e-mail
Confirming the Information I had Given
And Gave me a Reference Number Also
To Reassure Me .
After all this
I had calmed down 😔
And Felt better for getting It all off my chest 😉
It's an endless/fruitless battle to defeat these companies, they just don't care, and have no intention of complying with UK laws, often because they are offshore and exempt from them anyway.
The only way to really stop them is for the telecoms companies to block them at source, but as they use number scamming tech to generate false caller IDs, that's easier said than done.
I was once fool enough to purchase from Everest windows probably 25 years ago, and nothing on this earth seems capable of stopping their persistent cold calls ever since, I've done every legal challenge to them, employed number blocking (they forever use new calling numbers), and nothing stops them!
All I do now is be excruciating obscenely rude and abusive to whichever mug salesman is stupid enough to call me if for some odd reason I answered a 'strange' phone number (sometimes you are expecting calls from new people who's number you don't have), at least that individual NEVER wants to be in contact with me again, and I feel better for the rant in as much at least I got the better of that call/individual!
Last call they made I was on my way to Portsmouth Ferry, negotiating my way to somewhere I didn't know and looking for a particular retail outlet complex to find a camping shop and somewhere for lunch, this salesman picked precisely the wrong moment to call as I hit a critical point on the road looking for the right turnoff - the moment he said 'Everest' I just LAUNCHED a near nuclear attack at him, he just whimpered a feeble 'sorry' when he could get a word in before hanging up. My mate sitting in the passenger seat had gone ashen grey, and eventually hesitantly said "what happened to 'Mr Cool' who just deals with everything without drama", my reply was "he annoyed me", my mate said you actually scared ME, kindly tell me LONG before I ever p**s you off! It's been a while, word has spread, it's become a bit of a legend, and "don't p**s him off, you won't like it" has become forever part of the blokeish banter amongst mates. Not heard from Everest for a while, may now be flagged up on the call list as PYSCO NUTTER!
I did once have great fun with a scam caller. Asked if I was the home owner. I said no that was grandad, I will fetch him. After a few moments with some appropriate noises of approaching grandad, I went into my “ old man excited to be getting a phone call” routine and had to repeat everything back to
“ Muther “ . Can’t understand it, he cut the call after a few minutes.
There was another one who said there was a problem with windows on my pc. So he went into great detail. After a few minutes he asked if I could see something he mentioned and I said no. After a few more minutes of explanation he asked again. No, screen still blank. Then I asked, was I supposed to switch it on? Another one who ended the call.
We don’t get scam calls any more.
I find that scam calls tend to go in batches. We go for a while getting hardly any, like now, then suddenly we will go several months getting anything up to 10 a day! Then it goes quiet again for a while. I never answer unknown numbers and always work on the principle that if it's important they will leave a message. Scammers rarely if ever do. We have anonymous caller rejection, so any unidentified numbers get blocked at the exchange. Goodness knows how many of them we get because they never reach us. From looking up the numbers that do get through, our "local energy advisor" seems to think we live in numerous towns all over Britain, but he hasn't managed to hit on the right one yet.
He'll never know if he does as we still wouldn't answer him.
My Mother (God bless her now) had terrible dementure and got lots of callers as she was on the mugs list asking for donations to charities. She spent a fortune donating via her bank card.
My sister got power of attorney over her and gave her an expired card. She loved having a nice long chat with them and eventually would eventually agree to donate but of course it all broke down when she gave them her card details.
It was very difficult holding a conversation with her as she just kept repeating. She'd keep them going for hours.
As we are in a financial situation at this time i decided to look through the bank and stop charity and subscriptions. Im sure some of these have sold my details as the amount of scam calls and emails are absurd.
I stopped appliance care and iv had calls regarding appliance care from UK based numbers but not the accent.
It's so frustrating that scammers piggyback on existing government schemes and pretend to be 'energy advisors'. It could put people off seeking help. The ECO4 scheme, for example, runs until next March and is designed to help people relying on storage heaters, to name but one.
------------- Always edited for sloppy typing - when I spot it!
Anything that sounds like a scam call causes me to ring off about 5 seconds into call. Engaging with them is pointless. They are in India or similar speaking in a second language. Trying to play around with them is pointless.
I outed my landline years ago. If you use an iPhone then do not have any Google or Facebook product on it & do not use Gmail or any other email from the big providers. Use an encrypted email such as Protonmail. You will get virtually no scam calls.
Following a problem with some specific nuisance phone calls a few years ago we invested in a True Call box. Callers who aren't on our list have to identify themselves, then we can choose to accept or reject the call. It wasn't cheap, but it solved that particular problem, and stops scam calls as well.
If we'd known about it at the time, we would have got my mother in law one, as she had a lot of problems with them as she got older, and did fall for one scam. A scam caller sold her something to stop scam callers!
If the number doesn’t show as being a contact in my phone, I don’t answer. They can leave a message if it’s important.
And since we moved from BT to EE, the phone screen will show “nuisance?”. I also go to Who Called Me & report it & block the number on my phone (dial 1572) but I have to have answered the call first.
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