Toms View of the World

Yes, you “The Listening Company” on 0800 3896818

You’re a marketing company phoning me on behalf another company which has illegally sold you my details. I will not answer your calls.

I’m not the only one you’re annoying. Please refilter your dialing list via the TPS service providers, as you are required to do by law, and never call me again.

I shouldn’t need to dial 0800 0324617 to remove myself from your list - it should not have been there in the first place.

What I’d like someone to develop is a phone which can have rules based on the incoming number, then I could auto-reject (or even better - forward these nuisance callers to their own switchboard number (020 8484 1000))

Update: I’ve found a nice list of marketing company numbers (now broken) I will not answer the phone if I do not recognise the number anyway (and caller ID makes that really easy) and I will now check against this list if I recieve a call… Expect me to keep logging nuisance calls on this thread, just like I record the ongoing Dunraven Windows door-to-door nuisance on their thread.

Well, last night a bloke from Scottish Power gave me a call - explained that they had been given my number by Dreams Furniture Retail, as they “thought I might be interested in changing my electricity supplier” - I explained to him that I’m registered with the TPS, so they are breaking the law by cold calling me. He explained that as my number had been passed to them (despite that action being a breach of trust, let alone the UK data protection legislation, and the Direct Marketing Association’s rules (see Section G of the Guidelines - “Matching
against the TPS or FPS file is required by legislation“), I had not authorised the company in question to sell my details on), it wasn’t a cold call.

I hung up.

I’ll put up with calls from companies I actually do business with (e.g. Sky’s incessant bugging me to take an extended warantee on my Satellite box, no matter how many times I say “no”) but any company who cold-calls will be blacklisted as a company I will never knowingly do business with by choice. Dunraven Windows have been on that list for many years…

Let me make this clear. I do not want to recieve unsolicited sales calls. Ever. From anyone, via any medium, unless I have explicitly requested to be kept up to date on your products, services and offers. If I want to recieve your marketing, I’ll ask.

I always make sure I carefully read the “by ticking this box you agree that you do not authorise us to pass your details on to carefully selected 3rd parties whose products and services we feel you might be interested in” and ensure I correctly tick it (or not) to prevent my details being passed on.

If you, as a company do not respect my wishes, and I discover you passed my details onto a 3rd party for any reason, you are as bad as the telemarketing scum you sold my details to - to put it simply, don’t expect my business in future if you break my trust.

The following companies have recently been added to that blacklist:

Barclaycard, Dreams (the furniture retailer), Clydesdale Financial Services (who do the payment handling for Dreams), Scottish Power (who bought my number from Clydesdale and dreams)

Also recently added to the blacklist for “door to door” sales-calling:

British Gas, Swalec, nPower