Bongo Fury

There's a hillarious one on youtube where an american actor/comedian takes a call and proceeds to tell the caller he has called a crime scene of a homicide and how long had he known the victim - what follows needs to be heard to appreciate but I can't remember what the video was called!

Most calls you have to wait till the end of the speil then press 9 to stop any further calls.

If I get a real person I ask the company name and address- then tell them this is an ex directory number and that sales or marketing calls are charged at £250 for the first and £50 there after. I offer to waive the cost of this call (or letter)but that all future calls will be invoiced. I have sent out invoices before now but usually there are no more calls.

You can easily stop unsolicited cold calls by registering with Telephone Preference Service. However, in this case, the contact number has been given voluntarily to the broker, so that won't help. Personally, I would tell them that I have accepted a quote for £X somewhere else and that unless they can better that offer, then you no longer require their services and therefore politely request they remove your personal details from their system.

Sadly the TPS doesn't seem to work as well as it should.

Good idea though, Simon.

This one:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ttrzG5F4R3o

TPS has worked well for us. Gone from about 1 call a week to one every 2 to 3 months. As soon as you mention TPS they normally hang up pretty swift.

It certainly is worth signing up, that is a good reduction.

tps does work ... but we are getting a few more creeping through these days. also worth remembering that it doesn't work with calls from outside the uk.

Well having a hearing problem and only being able to use a telephone via the Typetalk Relay Service has an advantage of two when it comes to cold callers. On receiving a call I immediately put my phone into text mode to see if someone is calling me via Typtalk. Callers trying to make a normal call to me are then entertained for a few minutes by a sound similar to that given out by a fax machine. Some of them appear to waste ages phoning my number again and again. There must be something addictive about the sound given off by fax machines.

Tony