Unwanted Phone calls

[ajlennon]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum but I'm getting to the end of my tether with unwanted phone calls we're receiving on our landline. We moved in around 6 months ago, got a new number and I keep getting calls throughout the day. I'm paying Virgin Media for anonymous caller rejection (which I don't think I should have to pay for!) but keep getting calls with no number stored.

 

A lot of the time the caller doesn't say anything (as though it's one of those automated diallers that's not connected) which is worrying for my wife when she answers.

 

Other times debt collectors are asking for people we don't know with foreign sounding names, or it's somebody like the Halifax.

 

For example, I told the Halifax yesterday I didn't know the woman they wanted and not to contact me again. Then this morning another guy from Halifax called, said his notes said I'd knew the woman and to cal back !!!!! I asked for his department, or his manager, or for an address to complain to but he wouldn't give them to me. Then he wanted MY personal details, asking repeatedly, which I wouldn't give.

 

I'm really really fedup with this daily problem and wondered if anyone can please, please help?

[Guest wino]

I would ask Virgin for a new number due to harrassing calls. I had the same thing when we got a new number. We got four or five calls a day for the previous owner. I rang BT and explained the problem and they said they would mark it down as receiving nuicense (sorry can't spell) calls and they gave me another number. They will only do this once free of charge though.

There is a service called Telephone Preference Service (TPS) you can register your number there free of charge and it cuts down considerably on cold calls and sales calls.

If you get a sales call just tell them you are registered with TPS so please remove you from their data base.

[buzby]

TPS is only of very limited use, but as these people are wanting to speak to the correct number, not knowing that the previous user has given it up, will not have any beneficial effect. I'm on Virgin, and ACR (Anonymous Call Rejection) is completely free, although I understand ex-TW customers may still be billed. A call that comes it with no number. is not capoable of stopping calls with 'no number'. It will only prevent calls that have their number withheld - which is a different thing. These calls will either be from abroad, or from us call centres that manipulate their telephone systems to present an invalid number, and one that the handling telco will strip off and deliver blank - giving them the anonimity they seek.

 

All you can do is call VM customer services and report the high number of calls you are recieving for the previous user of the number, there is usually no problem with having it changed, however, there is no way of knowing whether thre replacement will be any better that the one you currently have.

[MARTIN3030]

Thread moved here.

[candy25]

Sorry to bring this back up, but did the above advice work? We recently changed providers, from Sky to Virgin, during this time, one or the other messed up (neither obviously will admit it) and we couldn't keep our old number and had to get a new one. We are getting phone calls for the previous person who had this number, although we constantly tell them we have had this number since just before xmas and we have no idea who this person is and would they stop calling, they still do and recently are increasingly rude!

 

We seem to get a lot of calls from a collection agency/Natwest. We were basically called liars every time we explained we had just taken on the number and they would pester us for our address which we refuse to give! We had recorded messages which do seem to have stopped for now and we would go through the menu and press the buttons to tell them this number no longer was for the person asked for etc. My husband had to ring up and complain for the 3rd time today after an extremely rude phone call he received yesterday (Sunday). They assured us (again) that our phone number is no longer associated with the person they are chasing and we shouldn't receive any calls from them. I also had to ring back another collection agency last month after my friend was verbally abused by someone chasing money while she was babysitting my daughter, while I had to rush my son the doctors after complications from the chicken pox, and tell them that I was not who they were looking for and that I wasn't happy they had been rude to my friend! This evening I have had a cold call from some 'debt management' company, I waited out to see what this person wanted first. He asked for the 'lady of the house/householder' I said that was myself, I have a cold at the moment so he could hear me coughing a little, enquired about my health, I asked him what he wanted! He then gave me the spiel that he wasn't selling anything or going to offer me a loan, at this point I realised he doesn't want me! He then went on to say that he was aware there were some outstanding debts against my name, I was cross by now and asked him which name might that be, since there were no outstanding debts against my name and he then quickly ended the call with, Ok madame goodbye! (I didn't give my name and he never asked for a person by name). I 1471'd but the number was unavailable so I'm guessing that this number has been sold on now!!

 

My husband has tried to get Virgin Media to help us out, all they offered was a caller ID service that we were expected to pay for, or a change of number, which we don't want to do because we will probably start all this rubbish all over again. They were extremely unhelpful. we have signed up to TPS, but it hasn't helped either. What do we do?

[candy25]

To just update on this, my husband called again and explained our problem, we got a much more helpful person on the phone who has given us free caller ID on our bill and they have reimbursed us for the calls we made back to the offending callers to ask them to stop ringing and will continue to until we stop getting these calls. We were also given a £30 credit as a 'goodwill' gesture. We are also to report any numbers who call us again even though we have explained we are not the people they are after and should have taken us from their call list to Virgin.

 

We have received only a couple of calls so far this month which were text messages from bailiffs, otherwise looks like we finally got through to them all