Heinz wrote on May 24^th, 2007 at 9:13pm:


I still don't understand your strategy.

I have the one normal phone line on BT equipment but with the Post Office.  I haven't left the Post Office because they paid me £65 in cash incentives to join them, they don't have a minimum call charge but per second billing and they do let me use 18185 with impunity and they even let me dial any number at all by dialling the 1280 BT over-ride, albeit that it then seems to be the BT rate for that call with some kind of 10% handling fee.

I am in the phone directory (I loathe with a pashion the stupid 50% of people who are not) but I am also registered with the TPS.

Despite my registration with the TPS suddenly ast Autumn a small band of hardened cold call abusers like Bracken Bay Kitchens and Data Preference Solutions called me every so often trying to sell me things.  On each occasion I filed a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner and copied the complaint to the Chief Executive of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) who run the TPS.

This year I have not received any of these manned sales calls at all and my presumption is either that the fact that Ofcom has shown it is finally to going get serious with the main scammers like BrackenBay Kitchens has put them off or that the DMA's CEO has added me to some kind of emergency "protect yourselves from this blighter" list to his members as my being someone to erase from all their databases at all costs due to my fondness for filing complaints with the ICO.

I hear back each day from businesses that I have called and want to hear from and on about 3 occasions out of 4 no CLI is displayed.  This is because the telecoms manager of their business has taken this stupid decision wo withhold CLI and not the people I am dealing with.  If I had ACR although some businesses would manage to call me another way with a CLI plenty of them would just give up on the basis that I was unreasonably difficult to call.  In fact I don't even see why ACR exists as a service when such a high percentage of phone calls are still Number Unavailable.  I do see why Choose to Refuse exists but I imagine that can be easily circumvented by the use by the caller of an overseas Voip carrier that does not provide any UK CLI information.

I think my strategy still avoids most unwanted calls but without stopping people I actually want to hear from calling me.  

Heinz wrote on May 25^th, 2007 at 11:16am:


Yes but some of us actually have lives to lead too whereas it seems you may allow the demonstation of your principles to get in the way of some aspects of living yours.

Clearly some companies that you may need to urgently speak to just won't be able to call you, however much you protest to the contrary.