Massive increase in Spam and Fake Landline Calls

Australian and NZ companies usually have very flat hierarchies. It's considered poor form to think yourself better than someone else. I've known a CEO to take the time to know thousands of employees by name and ask to be introduced immediately they don't know someone. You treat people as you'd like to be treated. Everyone's opinion is welcome and judged on merit. I found the same when living and working in Netherlands. A urologist was late for my appointment. After 30 mins I told the nurse I couldn't wait as I was on an hourly contract and it was costing me. A few days later I received a signed letter (written in English) from the urologist apologising for any inconvenience he'd caused me along with his direct number to make a new appointment. The Dutch can be brutally honest too. About to have a camera in my bladder under local anasthetic I asked the nurse if it would hurt much. "Oh yes, of course, it's very painful" she replied, "but you can squeeze my hand if you like".
count yourself lucky you had an anaesthetic. I had a camera rammed up a place you don't want, in to my bladder. no anaesthetic. it felt like id been impaled on a sword. They said it wouldnt hurt. they did seem concerned that i may pass out. concern of a sort.
however, if anyone needs a uroscopy, just grit your teeth and do it. it could save your life. it was over in seconds. maybe you can get an anaesthetic if you ask.
 
Last edited:
count yourself lucky you had an anaesthetic. I had a camera rammed up a place you don't want, in to my bladder. no anaesthetic. it felt like id been impaled on a sword. They they said it wouldnt hurt. lies. they did seem concerned that i may pass out. concern of a sort.
however, if anyone needs a uroscopy, just grit your teeth and do it. it could save your life.
I had the same but they stuck a needle in it to numb it a bit. When I saw the size of the camera I nearly passed out. Like driving a bus up an exhaust pipe. How could they even dare to say it wouldn't hurt ? I hope you screamed loudly and kicked someone.
 
Sorry, we're going off topic and I imagine a few people have watery eyes after reading this. Good advice though. It's worth the hurt in the end.
 
Just a camera? I've had stents fitted a couple of time as a result of kidney stones. The stents were inserted under general but nothing when they go fishing for them a few weeks later...
 
Just a camera? I've had stents fitted a couple of time as a result of kidney stones. The stents were inserted under general but nothing when they go fishing for them a few weeks later...
@ #metoo. Nearly passed out going to the loo when I came round after my stent was removed under GA. And that ECSL lithotripsy isn’t painful, yeah right! The faster it goes, the worse it gets.
 
I find it incredibly frustrating and irritating. No-one ever calls my landline - apart from scammers and my GP surgery but as calls are so infrequent its not an issue but my mobile receives multiple calls each day for PPI claims, life assurance, new boilers or funeral plans all of which are annoying as i use my phone most of the day for streaming music or podcasts which at the very least are interrupted by these calls. I block individual numbers but they seem to get around it. It is very intrusive. I think that the phone companies should be made liable and fined when these calls come through. If that were the case then I'm sure they would find more effective ways to block them.
 
I turned off call screening this morning as we're expecting a call from British Gas and want it to get through. I've had 8 cold calls so far :facepalm:
 
I find it incredibly frustrating and irritating. No-one ever calls my landline - apart from scammers and my GP surgery but as calls are so infrequent its not an issue but my mobile receives multiple calls each day for PPI claims, life assurance, new boilers or funeral plans all of which are annoying as i use my phone most of the day for streaming music or podcasts which at the very least are interrupted by these calls. I block individual numbers but they seem to get around it. It is very intrusive. I think that the phone companies should be made liable and fined when these calls come through. If that were the case then I'm sure they would find more effective ways to block them.
I think the laws could be strengthened against cold calling or in regards to selling people's details, but it's hardly the phone company's fault. I prefer to cooly ask callers if they would remove my name and number from any list they have. I believe they are then obliged to do so by law.

The trouble is personal details and numbers are so easily sold. I advise to avoid giving out your phone number or email wherever possible. My wife took years trying to stop the Red Cross sending her a bunch of cards, bookmarks or coasters every Christmas. All she did was gove them one donation and they spent much more bombarding her with their rubbish. It was a complete waste of the money people had contributed, money that could be better spent on those who need assistance. I would never contribute to the Red Cross again but they're certainly not the only ones who do it.
 
I turned off call screening this morning as we're expecting a call from British Gas and want it to get through. I've had 8 cold calls so far :facepalm:
I got fed up when we got to 12, including one genuine one, which was a cold call from a charity :rolleyes:

Call screening back on. The silence is wonderful...

As it looks like BG are on strike on Friday I'm not that bothered waiting for a call to tell us when the service engineer is or isn't coming
 
Have to say great shout from those using those BT phones. I got them for my mum too when she started getting about 20 calls a day out of nowhere. It was ridiculous. But thankfully they do work a treat.
 
The calls have persuaded us to have the landline turned off, we hardly use it anyway. They've saved us a tenner a month. No disconnection fee, no new contract, simple. I don't have a mobile, can't be arsed with one, but my wife has. That'll do.
 
There was a thing on Rip Off Britain this morning about a Telecom company that was contacting elderly BT customers and 'persuading' them to sign up to them. A couple of the sales peoples phone calls were played and it was quite shocking the dubious tactics with their sales pitch.
Not spam as such but shocking way to conduct business, but I suppose with the toothless Ofcom doing so little about this sort of thing then these companies have little to fear.

Personally I did away with my landline phone some weeks ago,need the line for broadband but as soon as I have a reasonably priced fibre to home alternative that can go.
 
i got a load of texts and a few HMRC calls at the beginning of may
after forwarding the texts to 7726 as they came in, they just seemed to stop . not had either for a week now
 
As we are ex dir and have other things in place we get few spam callers, and those that get through I sometimes play along with them to waste their time until they get fed up. The email ones are getting more of a pain lately and I have got to the point where I am suspicious about most of the stuff that comes through. Although I sent a lot of them to the "phishing" police I don't know if it's really helping in any way ? I think I have had most of the "car tax/TV licence/Royal Mail Parcels/Microsoft/ BT" type emails in the last 2/3 months, but I haven't had the "Prince" of some African state asking me to help him to get his wealth out of the country for some while, perhaps he succeeded and doesn't want my help anymore ?
 
I turned off call screening this morning as we're expecting a call from British Gas and want it to get through. I've had 8 cold calls so far :facepalm:
I found the same when turning off call guardian when expecting important calls from the hospital and made me appreciate just how much it was doing. It's such a great system in normal use because previously the landline phone was just ignored when it rang and if it was someone genuine they'd leave a message and phone them back but now if the phone rings in most cases it's a genuine call now.
 
OFCOM and the ICO are making vauge threats to do something about it. I'm not holding my breath. BT say they need to modernise their network to be able to sort out some of the spoof calls. Sounds familiar 🥱


 
I had 2 yesterday - both the internet provider thing with the electronic voice. Today I got the £600 sent abroad on your debit card nonsense - also electronic voice.

What was interesting was that for today's call I hung up and then dialled 1471. I thought I would add the number to one of those "Who called me " jobbies. I hadn't managed to get a bit of paper fast enough to write the number down, so I hung on expecting to get the dial 2 to listen again, 3 to return the call, message. But I didn't. Instead of the options, the 1471 voice just said "Please hang up". This suggests to me that the telephone provider (BT in this case) know the call is junk, so don't allow customers to dial the number back. But if they can identify certain call to prevent us from dialling back why can't they weed out such calls in the first place?
 
Last edited:
BT stands for Before Technology which is the problem
Agreed that BT might be a bit antiquated but this is happening all over the world, I don't know if it's happening in Russia though as the scammers would most probably be hunted down and "bumped off" !
 
Agreed that BT might be a bit antiquated but this is happening all over the world, I don't know if it's happening in Russia though as the scammers would most probably be hunted down and "bumped off" !
Or work for the government
 
I'm getting a spate of phone calls from shysters pretending to be from Amazon saying there has been a suspicious payment on my account. Sometimes it's a recorded voice but sometimes it's a real human. The first time it happened I wasn't sure if it was genuine or not so I told the man there was someone at the door and would he ring back 10 minutes later. As soon as I had got rid of him I went to my Amazon account and hit the 'call me' button and within 15 seconds a charming man in India phoned me. After a few security questions he went to check my account and said there had been no suspicious activity whatsoever and the caller had been a scammer. He also told me that Amazon will email rather than phone if they think an account has been hacked.
 
I'm getting a spate of phone calls from shysters pretending to be from Amazon saying there has been a suspicious payment on my account. Sometimes it's a recorded voice but sometimes it's a real human. The first time it happened I wasn't sure if it was genuine or not so I told the man there was someone at the door and would he ring back 10 minutes later. As soon as I had got rid of him I went to my Amazon account and hit the 'call me' button and within 15 seconds a charming man in India phoned me. After a few security questions he went to check my account and said there had been no suspicious activity whatsoever and the caller had been a scammer. He also told me that Amazon will email rather than phone if they think an account has been hacked.
Did the scammer ring back, Rebecca?

And did you call out their fakery after your chat with the Amazon representative?
 
You have to be very careful to make sure you have a dialling tone on your phone if you try to phone your bank or whoever to check after a call, they could still be on the line and pretending to be who you are trying to phone (some will even have a fake dialling tone playing) Banks won't phone you and to be phoned by a big firm like Amazon or eBay/Royal Mail doesn't happen. I found myself locked out of my emails this morning because someone had made multiple attempts at trying to get in. I never leave my emails open and log on every time, I know it's a pain but so is getting compromised by someone !
 
Last edited:

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom