Earlier I received a silent call from Royal SunAlliance (who use LBM for their telemarketing). The CLID showed as 0845 677 6772, and my telephone number's registered with TPS so I got a bit wound up about this. Rang it back on Skype, got the Royal SunAlliance message "thanks for getting back, if we need to speak to you again we'll ring you again" (then it hung up)... Hmpf... so I rang Royal SunAlliance's main switchboard and asked to be put through to their marketing department. Switchboard number is 01403 232 323 (which they freely disclose on their web site, all credit to them).

Spoke to someone in marketing who was very helpful; he explained that they outsourced their telesales to LBM, and I said that I understood it wasn't their fault directly but they were responsible, he agreed, said he would follow this up and I passed on my thanks and hoped that he enjoyed composing 'a rather pointed email to them' - which he laughed at, and agreed at how annoying these kinds of calls are. I gave him my last name and phone number, and that was that.

Five minutes, and one pleasant phone call later, job done! So, it does seem that once in a while you can get a result from a friendly phone call Just thought I'd post this positive experience - maybe we should all be targeting the parent companies' marketing sections directly instead of just complaining to LBM (who I doubt pass any of their complaints on to the companies they work for). If they get enough complaints about them, companies'll stop using them. Don't you love the free market in action...

mattross wrote on May 25^th, 2007 at 4:34pm:

I have joined your post onto the end of the existing thread and put an entry in the database for it.

Just had 0845 677 6772 Come up on me mobi. Didn't answer it. They left a voice mail. They left the number 0800 197 5873 to call to find out more info or be removed from their call list.

So I called the 0800 number. Turns out it's More Th>n insurance.
I have now been on hold for 19 minutes. Will post again when I get through.

now 35 minutes. I have given up and hung up!

141 0800 197 5873

With enough people ringing it, and leaving their phones off the hook, might just give them a taste of their own medicine.
Unfortunately they'll probably just tack the costs onto someone's premium.

An old(ish) thread, but I've had three calls from this number in the past 4 days, all of them "silent". Having spoken to the TPS, they actually stated that they can't deal with "silent" calls, only with those where an actual human is at the other end! They then suggested I speak to Ofcom, which I duly did.

Ofcom didn't really seem that interested in taking my complaint, but I pushed a bit and pointed out the statement here:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2006/03/nr_20060301

Particularly:
Quote:


The lady at Ofcom then said that as there is a message when I ring 08456 776772 then the calling company isn't in breach of that rule. My response was that it seemed somehow wrong that I need to ring (at my expense) the number to find out who it was that was calling and what the call was regarding. After a bit more pushing, she relented and made a note of my complaint.

I've tried calling Royal Sun Alliance twice so far -- first time I was told the entire marketing department had left for the day (yesterday at about 5.12pm), and again today at 12.25pm just to get put through to an answerphone. Also, the receptionist wants to know what marketing department you want, so I need to figure that out...

I'll try them again in a few minutes.

I'm not sure if this works or if it works on landlines, whether it will also work on mobiles, but it's worth a try!

Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and
records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real"
sales person to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to
immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as
quickly as possible This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it
kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your
name in their system any longer!!!