Forum Discussion

MrsM4's avatar
MrsM4
Tuning in
21 days ago
Solved

Frequent cold calling

We have a virgin landline where we receive fairly regular cold calling, sometimes 2-3 times a day, offering windows, boilers, solar panels, loft insulation or some other apparently energy related government scheme to name just a few.   They do not respect people's lives in the times they call and appear on the phone screen as local area numbers when they are clearly not.  A few are automated, but most have someone clearly reading a prepared script to you.  We are registered with the TPS on the landline number as well as our mobiles.  We try to politely say we are not interested, but many ignore this and will continue to talk over you regardless. 

Is there any way that Virgin can identify these cold calls and automatically block them?   Other services providers are looking at and introducing this type of spam calling service.  Or is the only option of plugging in and unplugging the phone after use the only option?

We've steered away from the formal call block that was on offer many years ago as it blocked calls from organisations which may withhold their numbers, including hospitals which are important to some and can't have these numbers blocked. 

We have only reluctantly kept the landline purely down to the mobile reception in our area being poor indoors and sometimes having to revert to the old way of calling to make or receive a sucessful call from inside the house.   The TPS has confirmed in the past our number on their list but it can't stop these cold callers from ignoring it!

  • MrsM4's avatar
    MrsM4
    14 days ago

    Many thanks for all the answers  to my post.   They have all been really helpful.  I hadn't considered using WiFi calling for our poor mobile reception which on further investigation would be not much different whatever netwirk we were using.  I've since checked our phone settings and WiFi calling doesn't appear as an option on our phones (samsung/vodafone).  A shame as that would have been a big winner for the mobile issue.  Never say never, when we next have a need to update our phones I will make sure that I look for this as an option in phone choice.

    With regards to the cold calling, I think I'd sort of accepted we may end up keeping the landline for as-required situations, however this forum has confirmed we would be doing the right thing in retaining it, for the time being anyway.

    I'm going to read the jolly Rogers article  for some hints and tips. Maybe I can find some time wasting ways to deal with these calls (where a real person is involved) to counter balance of my annoyance by in turn wasting their time too 🤣

6 Replies

  • japitts's avatar
    japitts
    Very Insightful Person

    Cold & spam calling is an industry-wide problem, no provider (fixed or mobile) is immune from it.

    Many mobile providers offer WiFi-calling as a means of using your phone indoors without need for mobile coverage, where the WiFi-router provides your radio connection to the mobile network instead of network coverage.

    That said, personal advice would be to retain a landline if it's not hindering you - if there is ever a problem with your mobile or suchlike, then too many users are then incapable of making contact because they have no other phone. Putting all your eggs in one technological/provider basket, so to speak, does leave you stuck if that "one egg" has a problem.

    • MrsM4's avatar
      MrsM4
      Tuning in

      Many thanks for all the answers  to my post.   They have all been really helpful.  I hadn't considered using WiFi calling for our poor mobile reception which on further investigation would be not much different whatever netwirk we were using.  I've since checked our phone settings and WiFi calling doesn't appear as an option on our phones (samsung/vodafone).  A shame as that would have been a big winner for the mobile issue.  Never say never, when we next have a need to update our phones I will make sure that I look for this as an option in phone choice.

      With regards to the cold calling, I think I'd sort of accepted we may end up keeping the landline for as-required situations, however this forum has confirmed we would be doing the right thing in retaining it, for the time being anyway.

      I'm going to read the jolly Rogers article  for some hints and tips. Maybe I can find some time wasting ways to deal with these calls (where a real person is involved) to counter balance of my annoyance by in turn wasting their time too 🤣

  • Hi MrsM4 

    Welcome to the Community Forums. 

    Sorry to hear that you're experiencing high levels of nuisance calls. Sadly there isn't a feature that can block these at this time. We do offer feature such as anonymous caller reject, but as you say, this does also filter all withheld numbers and you may still receive some cold calls that can bypass this. 

    There are handsets that offer some blocking technology which may interest you if you're looking at reducing those types of calls. We have some helpful tips and support here for things you can do for nuisance calls which you can take a look to see if this helps. 

    If you suspect a fraud call then we have more advice on those types of calls here and here

  • ALF28's avatar
    ALF28
    Super solver

    These frequent cold call, which are daily are from numbers that are "unknown" and usually are pre-recorded messages. I also get lots of calls from mobile numbers. I often get the loft insulation and boiler calls, even though TPS registered, I also have anonymous call rejection on my VM house phone. I do not answer cold calls and use my own answer phone set to 9 rings but rarely ever get any message left.

    I think the cold callers can spoof any phone number, easy to do, so most are just random numbers in some cases may belong to someone else by.

    I also look at the caller display number and will pick up any local or recognised number calls, as they may be wanted.

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta

    I no longer have a landline but, when I did, I used this device

    https://www.truecall.co.uk/category-s/116.htm

    which was 100% effective at stopping the scam calls.

    It is capable of blocking numbers but it actually works by screening incoming calls.

    When someone calls your number, the device prompts them to say who is calling and then press a key on their keypad. Only when they do this does the call come through the device and cause your phone to ring and you hear the callers identification announcement. You then decide to accept or reject the call.

    Automated scam calls cannot complete the key pad button instruction and scammers realise that they are unlikely to get anywhere calling someone with such a device on the line.

    The device can hold your address book of known numbers and those come straight through with no screening. Withheld numbers from medical services such as doctors and hospitals can still get through by completing the screening process.

    The device can be configured in various ways to give very light or very restrictive screening to suit the owner's requirements.

    Price for a new device is £110 but second hand units regularly crop up on eBay at much lower prices (with the usual caveats about eBay purchases).

    We have seen occasional topics on here where there have been technical issues with a connection to a VM hub but trueCall support have been able to resolve these by dialling in to the unit and updating the firmware to work on a VM hub landline. This kind of modification cannot be done on a phone handset (such as BT devices) which have a simplified version of trueCall built in.

    Well worth the money IMHO for anyone wanting to keep a VM landline and not be troubled by scam calls.