How to stop bloody telcos cold calling?

Two key tips (which have probably been mentioned already)
  • Inform your phone service provider that you want to opt out of cold calling and they are obliged to log this information and other companies are obliged to respect your request.
  • If/when they call even after doing that then ask for the name of the company and note it down then tell them you don't want them to call again. If they do complain to them and to ComReg since they are acting illegally (unless you already have some dealings with them).
 
I am with Utv talk and did it online to get my number taken off the database

I am still getting them but the seem to be from America as I have won so many cruises. Also not there during the day & the answer machine has so many blank messages ?

Rang comreg and they cannot do anything in relation to calls that come from outside of Ireland?? When they ring and I do answer there is no one at the other end do I have a haunted phone??

Still annoying Rant over
 
before I registered with the telephone preference service (I live in the UK) I used to find that being rude and abusive was not only effective but therapeutic to boot.

I always assumed (wrongly perhaps) that by being polite you only opened yourself up to further nuisance phone calls. Are potential customers graded on how amenable they seem to cold calling? if you are polite upon first contact does this just encourage another call at a later date?

it is not big, it is not clever and it is certainly rude, but telling someone where to go after a hard days work used to be one of my little treats (you can also pretend that it is your mother in law)
 
The Irish data protection commisioner has a good all round site on this www.dataprivacy.ie Their point on the NDD is that the operator registers your preference details -not you- As a customer of theirs they can contact you unless you indicate otherwise. So you do have to call the operator. A list of the contacts and more info is available here:
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If they do not respond you can use their complaint form or the complaint form on www.comreg.ie

The IDMA operate a Mail Preference Service and you can register your address so that direct marketers will not send you personalised unsolicted post. It does not cover flyers or post outside Ireland. It's free, lasts 5 years and you can complete the form here and send to mailing Preference Service, Freepost, POB 5609, Dublin 4.
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I am curious though as to who is receiving the bulk of the calls. Just recently my elderly parents were complaining about both of the above. They seem to get a ton of "help the poor nun in nigeria" stuff. They also told me that most of their friends get the same thing. It sounds like an unseemly approach to a vulnerable group. The worrying thing is that they believed a lot of the dubious approaches. Suffice to say I filled up the form for them and sorted out their Eircom NDD. Please take note if you are aware of anyone who may be vulnerable to this.

[broken link removed]
 
Newsletter said:
I am curious though as to who is receiving the bulk of the calls. Just recently my elderly parents were complaining about both of the above.
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My parents seem to be on the same list! They get calls at least twice a week - mainly congratulating them on the savings they are about to make on their phone bill. One crowd had them switched over based just on the conversation - thank god for the cooling off period. The folks aren't doddery and won't get caught again; the power of being rude and hanging up:)

Thanks for the info re the NDD - going to check that out for them.

And I see some of the posters here have sympathy for the poor cold callers - well IMHO they are the lowest of the low and don't care about the vulnerable people they maybe calling. May they eventually spend eternity in the great call centre in the sky; on hold.:)
 
dublinboy said:
My parents seem to be on the same list! They get calls at least twice a week - mainly congratulating them on the savings they are about to make on their phone bill. One crowd had them switched over based just on the conversation - thank god for the cooling off period. The folks aren't doddery and won't get caught again; the power of being rude and hanging up:)

Thanks for the info re the NDD - going to check that out for them.

And I see some of the posters here have sympathy for the poor cold callers - well IMHO they are the lowest of the low and don't care about the vulnerable people they maybe calling. May they eventually spend eternity in the great call centre in the sky; on hold.:)
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...listening to "Greensleeves".
 
It's not stopping at the telcos now it seems. We have had two calls from Sky TV over the last few days and even MBNA ( I use their cc ) rang me up to see if I was interested in applying for a loan !
 
demoivre said:
It's not stopping at the telcos now it seems. We have had two calls from Sky TV over the last few days and even MBNA ( I use their cc ) rang me up to see if I was interested in applying for a loan !
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Sky TV first called us several weeks before Christmas 2005. Our caller display shows they are STILL calling regularly, up to and including both yesterday and today. It is bordering on harrassment!

ClubMan wrote: "Two key tips (which have probably been mentioned already)
Inform your phone service provider that you want to opt out of cold calling and they are obliged to log this information and other companies are obliged to respect your request.
If/when they call even after doing that then ask for the name of the company and note it down then tell them you don't want them to call again. If they do complain to them and to ComReg since they are acting illegally (unless you already have some dealings with them)."

Sky are phoning from Scotland. Presumably there's no way of stopping them via ComReg or similar?
 
1. If your service provider is Eircom, telephone 1901 and tell the customer service operator that you "want to opt out of the national directory database".
2. This procedure takes twenty-eight days to come into effect.
3. In the meantime, keep a pen and paper by the telephone and if you receive any calls in that time note which company the call is from and tell them "I want to be removed from all lists operated by your company".
4. If within that twenty-eight days you receive a call from a telemarketing company you have said "I want to be removed from all lists operated by your company" to, then, report them to Data Protection (01874-8544).
5. After twenty-eight days if you recieve ANY telemarketting calls, then, find out who the call is coming from, write it down and report it to the Data Protection people (01874-8544)
There's a leaflet below, [broken link removed]
 
First we should be asking ourselves which politician passed a law allowing cold-calling in the first place & leaving it up to the consumers to 'opt-out'. The rules are loaded in favour of the marketeers. They're not even obliged to show caller idents.

I'm still getting calls even after optinng out & the callers are not providing the information that's required under the regulations. I've had a number of calls from 'TalkTalk' even though I've told them not to call me. When I ask to speak to a manager, they just hang up. Clearly, that company thinks Irish law is a joke.

Is there a device that could screen out the marketeers' predictive-diallers?

There could be a market for that sort of thing here, since if the government won't protect consumers, we'll have to do it ourselves.
 
NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!

Phone 1800 923 853 and log your telephone number. After approx. 4 weeks you will receive no more calls from those ~~~~'s. I don't know how or why it works, but it does. IFA TELECOM sent this number to all their customers.

FARMER POWER!!!!
 
Jack The Lad said:
Phone 1800 923 853 and log your telephone number. After approx. 4 weeks you will receive no more calls from those ~~~~'s. I don't know how or why it works, but it does. IFA TELECOM sent this number to all their customers.FARMER POWER!!!!
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The regulations require each customer who does not want direct-marketing calls to contact their own service provider. So that's probably the number for IFA customers only.

When I phoned Eircom, I was on hold for 20 minutes before they came on the line.

Now ComReg could have allowed people to register their objection via a web site or the government could have changed the rule to an 'opt-in' one.

Indeed, they could've required the marketeers to display a special number so that we could block them automatically. But they didn't.

The law is tilted in favour of the marketeers.
 
2Pack said:
They are non compliant with a Comreg regulation called the CPS Code Of Practice. Talk Talk were done for this a year ago , see

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0508.pdf
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It's more than 28 days since I opted out & I got yet another call from someone representing 'TalkTalk'.

They said that they'd no record of my previous objections because TalkTalk contracts out the calls to external call-centres and they each have their own databases. I'd have to ring another number to ask to be deleted from their list. And, they didn't know about my opt-out on the national caller preference database.

I don't believe a word of it.

Caveat Emptor.
 
According to today's Irish Times, 10,000 people have opted out and the Data Protection Commissioner is disappointed with this figure. It seems a lot to me.

Since I opted out around a month ago, I have got only one call and that was from... talk talk.
 
maybe blowing a referee's whislte down the receiver might eh, soften their cough....

daithi
 
1: It's probably illegal to do that. You could get sued.

2: The call-centre hardware routinely filters loud noises (such as crackles etc) to protect the operatives.

Has anyone experimented with playing tones that might mess with the call-center's predictive auto-dialler logic?
 
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