Telephone Scams?

If you want to stop virtually all the annoying telesales calls, go to this website and register for TPS. Once its registered, it becomes illegal for companies to call you, I know its certainly made our phone ALOT quieter on an evening.
You can do the same for all the junk mail that arrives in the post, just go to the link for MPS

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/what/

deff worth registering!!!!!

I've registered!  Thanks - hopefully the weekends will be quieter!

I registered with TPS after moving into a new home in 2001, and we've never received a telesales call. Of course I don't know if that's down to the wonders of TPS or just blind luck 

I just did the TPS and MPS registration.  I'm not too bothered by the calls, but I LOATHE getting mail meant for people who have previously had our address!

Especially when those letters are from debt collectors. Hate that 

Or in Spanish...

¡Vergonzoso!

Nooo...I'd love debt collection notices or Spanish mail!  Unfortunately, the people who lived here were very posh and were always going to the opera, the ballet, and art openings.  Every time we get one of their invitations, we feel really bad for being so boring!   

Second you can put a block on all premium rate calls (unless you need them for something),by dialling 150? and setting it up

Yes, 150 is the general customer services number for BT.  You'll have to work through the usual menus, but you can have a block set up on all premium-rate calls on your line.  As far as I'm aware, there is no charge for this.

If you have certain BT "Star Services" packages on your line and are on a particular type of exchange, then you can set up a bar on calls to certain classes of service yourself.  The relevant code to block all premium-rate calls is *346#. 

If you're not worried about auto-dialers on your computer, then the premium-rate numbers are easy to identify these days:  Be wary of any number which starts 09.

One other scam to watch for is the international "kick-back" number.      I won't go into the details of why and how this works (unless you really want me to!), but you just have to watch for places trying to get you to call strange overseas countries.

The ads will often try to disguise the fact that you are making an international call by breaking up the number in an unconventional way, e.g. instead of showing 00-592... they will print it as 0-05-92... or something similar.   Don't be fooled:  If the first two digits are "00" then you are calling overseas (as I'm sure you all know from dialing 00-1  ).   The numbers they use are only charged at the normal international rate for the country concerned, but they are obscure countries for which the per-minute rate is very high.

Just be careful blocking international calls, as it could be your family!  We have an ex-directory (unlisted) number in the UK, and during my 2 week visit, we only got one unwanted call, from someone who had mis-dialed, not a telemarketer.  I'll never have a listed number again!

My parents in the US have "call intercept", where if a call isn't listed on caller ID, it makes you give your name, and then it asks them (while putting you on hold) if they want to take the call.  It's a good idea in principle, and probably saves them a lot of grief, but it does mean that every time I call them from the UK I have to go through their robot.   

The weird thing is that sometimes when my fiance calls my cell phone, it recognizes his number and gives his special ring I assigned him, and other times the caller ID doesn't work.  Guess it depends on which path it takes going from his phone to mine.