We've been getting a steady influx of calls from Indian call centres on our landline. They're usually scams of some variety - the one I had just now claimed to be from a support agency (adamantly refused to give company name) that was going to help us troubleshoot fluxtuating internet speeds caused by virii, and tried to get me to visit teamviewer.com, a remote desktop online utility. Previous ones have tried to get our insurance information, personal details, address, and so on. They're invariably Indian call centres; there is usually a connecting pause after the call is answered, the number is always withheld; they usually claim to represent some official body, but will usually give a false name (like "john ceder"), will refuse to give information about who they're working for or where they're based and will refuse to pass to a supervisor. They're often very obnoxious and pushy, with very bad manners; people experiencing these calls have reported being shouted and sworn at, but the worst I've had so far is the last guy, who repeatedly yelled "who are YOU? I don't know you! You could be anybody!" when I asked for the name of his company. They often speak very bad English, are usually pretty short on manners, and are always deliberately slow on the uptake - evasive, obtuse and good at playing dumb when you try to get past their ********. Has anyone else had this? We only started getting it a year or so ago but it's increasing, happens every fortnight or so now. I called some government departments and that sales call opt-out service (I forget the name), and as far as I've been able to tell there's no legal recourse against this kind of thing and no way to find out who/where the calls are coming from.
Change your number/screen unknown calls? Sucks to be in that position, but the easiest thing is to get rid of the calls the quickest way and carry on with life.
http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html Get signed up to that and they should get reduced in 2weeks, had to do recently to my landline after changing from BT to SKY, got at least 5 a day all about PPI and saving money on energy and phone bills. If you get any after the 2weeks your entitled to lodge a complaint. *just noticed you said you had phoned the scheme already but worth getting back in contact to report.
I get them all the time your computer is infected one every few days I just let them think I'm fooled for a while then tell them the virus must have gone up where the sun don't shine lol and by the time I've got to the point of casting doubt on their parents they normally hang up lol I've tried to have them blocked but most are either skype or foreign so they cant be blocked so BT told me.
A trick is talk gibberish with them, thinking they are talking to a person who can't speak English, and that's enough to get them to remove you from the list, speaking very loudly in gibberish also helps. "ARkTSj0miji! Arlopogerlka! Bromta! Grometa! GromeTAA! GROOOMMMAATAT!!! ..." Yup that works. This works for telemarketers, also.
Ive had these guys and i treat them the same as all sales calls i receive. Give them as much grief as possible. If you can piss them off enough they will flag your record as a waste of time and they wont call again. If they are uk based then say you are tps registered and you wont hear from them again as there are big fines for calling you if you are.
A lot of outbound call centres use predictive diallers. This is why you hear a pause before you're connected with an agent. I tend to pick up and wait a couple of seconds. If I hear that 'faint silence' I just put the phone down. TPS is useful but only screens UK based calls. More and more these calls originate from overseas and are a pain in the bum.
I told them once, that yes I had a PC which was connected to the internet, on dial up. They asked for my mobile number which I said I didn't know, I then told then my PC was some 20 years old. They asked me what operating system I was running, Windows XP or Vista, I said MS DOS 6.22 they soon hung up. Times after that I've been far less polite, and I'll admit I get very racist to them I really don't care and more often than not they argue with me and tell me it's genuine etc, I just get even more racist. I have no issue with anybody working in a call centre to earn a living but not in the manner that they do. As far as I'm concerned they can all go and burn in hell.
Just follow this to turn it around and piss them off http://egbg.home.xs4all.nl/counterscript.html That is all.
Thinking about it perhaps give them a blast with a decent loud whistle down the phone, give them ear ache !
I did have a lot of fun with the last guy, actually. He was exceptionally rude and immature, and hilariously bad at what he was trying to do. Went something like this (with authentic Inglish recreated as best as I can remember it): I wish I'd recorded it. It was just bizarre. He left me laughing, though, which is more than most telesales people do. edit - one thing I thought of that I want to try next time is saying, at the outset, "I'm recording this call for legal and training purposes." My money's on most of them hanging up then and there.
We get these a lot as well, as many as one per day some weeks. Always from foreign call centres, and always blatant scams/information fishing exercises. So I've devised a way to handle them. A conversation can go one of three ways; 1) They answer in a foreign accent and whoever answers the phone here recognizes this and starts screaming and shouting into the phone, causing the person on the other end to hang up (this is my own personal favourite) 2) The person who answers the phone simply hangs up once they have said "hello may I speak to the business owner" or whatever intro line they use or 3) We talk to them, speaking absolute jibberish or giving them tons of incorrect and confusing information, or simply start arguing with them over anything. All three are quite effective. We've also contacted BT and threatened to remove both phone lines if they don't start blocking such spam calls, and they've obliged. We're only getting about one per week now, and the above methods are more than capable of scaring those stragglers off
Got a call from an 0800 number before and I wanted to try out my new found skills from this thread and then report back. Too bad my Mum pressed the red button before I has chance.
Playing various soundboards at them is *very* effective. 3 minutes is my record before someone twigged. They get the Arnie one in about 10 seconds flat, and you can hear them *slam* the disconnect button.
You mean French? I try and keep them on the phone for as long as possible even if it means just throwing the phone onto the sofa and leaving it. Someone should just talk dirty and pretend to masturbate to them down the phone.
This. I no longer get any sales calls or anything else. Also if you haven't already heard of him, check out some Tom Mabe - the guy is an absolute genius with call centre pranks. *Edit* Yeah, just finished reading it all. It sounds like you are getting pranked more than anything else. About the only thing you can do in reality to stop this is what Krikkit advises.
