Dear all
Do any of you receive those nuisance phone calls re the installation of gas boilers etc ‘funded by the government’?
Thank God we have an ansaphone but still, do any of you know how to get rid of these? I remember (but no more than that…) that ITV spent time on this subject a while ago, but cannot recall how.
Thank you in advance.
Jos
I’ve not had the gas boiler one, but signing up to the Telephone Preference Service dramatically reduced the number of unsolicited sales calls we receive. If you google TPS I think you can do it on line and takes a few days to kick in.
Hello Jos You can register online at www.tpsonline.org.uk It’s free but you need the callers number. Tps stands for telephone preferences service and it’s an official site. Good luck x
We did that one together flowerpot lol
I donot get ANY nuisance calls because I died on 23 November 2011,and anybody asking for Mr Stephen Wilson gets,“I’m his brother Andrew,he died on blah blah” By then the phone is hung up at their end.
This does work and by always asking who they are I can stop any caller in their tracks.
Wb
ps It was a lovely service and I went through the doors to AC/DC Highway to Hell
Oh, that’s a great one. I’ve also heard of someone who when taking these calls responds to the how are you today question with, oh good, you’re a doctor and then goes on to catalogue a list of ailments before saying thank you for calling, it’s been good to talk to you then hanging up! A friend gives the phone to her toddler son and lets him talk gibberish to them, after all she’s not paying for the call and her little boy loves talking on the phone. There must be lots of other clever ways of putting these callers off.
I know someone who does a country bumpkin act and his best Norfolk accent for as long as he can keep it up. He then usually oh, says the person you want is down the garden, I’ll give them a holler and then puts the phone down for a while, when he comes back, they’re gone …
Since I am from Norn Iron and have the accent to go with it - I did once demand to know how they got the number, that the number was a dedicated number for the anti-terrorist hotline in Norn Iron and that an official visit would be made to their place of work and details taken. It was a while ago and I have never know some-one to hang up so fast
JBK xx
Good one Jelly Belly - I’m from Norn Iron - so love your idea - once I hear a strange voice, I say that I’m the gardener and ask if I can take a message, they usually hang up…
my elderly mum was asked if they could talk to the house owner,so she said just a minute and then gave them the number of her local council whom she rents her home from then hung up and had a good laugh.
Barbara.xx
Nice one Wb, that made me chuckle! 
We bought a BT call guardian phone (3 handsets) (bt8500) and can honestly say not one nuisance call has got through since. You can block any number you wish, withheld numbers, international numbers etc. I was really getting exasperated with these calls - interupting my afternoon naps and at mealtimes so these phones are absolutely brilliant - I would truly recommend them x
The TPS is a product from the Chocolate fireguard Company
All they do is cut down the calls that come from within the UK, and not all of them. However, any time-waster that is is dumb enough to use a UK number gets reported. I use the “whocallsme” service to see if the number is a known telepest, and see what they normally claim to be calling about, first.
Try to make a complaint and see how many types of call they do not deal with. They will refer you to the ICO - which is another waste of space - for a wide range of calls.
If you are waiting for a call from a hospital or from a GP Surgery, they will both show up as “Caller withheld their number” (translates as “came through a private exchange”) so you answer it anyway.
BT could stop some of the calls stone dead - the ones that have spoofed the calling number - but they do not want to for some reason. If you knew that the calling number was presented as 0000-0000-0000 would you answer it? But BT let it come through.
Last week it was a string of calls about my accident (or “someone at your address has had an accident”), today it was two calls about the virus on my computer. When I cannot ignore a ringing phone, and it is a time-waster, I fall back on the hash key (#). Just tap it rhythmically about five times and then hold it down. This creates a tone that could be a system fault - so the caller hangs up. So you hang up and you have a clear line
Geoff
I just don’t answer the phone, and I have put a message on my answerphone that explain why.
I am slightly ( only slightly ) embarrased to say I have told quite a few cold callers that the home owner died and we are in the middle of the wake. These calls only happen on my father in laws line…we have never been in the phone book, never enter comps etc where you have to give a phone number etc so maybe that is why we do not get them but we have not even had a random dialler call so far as I know.
I also in desperation returned books to Readers Digest who just would not take no for an answer when sending stuff to my father in law as he used to be always duped into buying them thinking he was going to win a huge sum of money. When it got too bad I refused delivery of the books and the postie allowed me to write “died” on the box.
I followed it up with a letter saying he had passed away and please take his details from the database.
I do not like or endorse lies and felt awful saying he was dead but he suffers from Dementia and was scammed over and over.
It was desperation and it worked so now I use it when necessary.
When we stay at his home I have to use a lot of energy and effort to get to the phone, he refuses to have a cordless phone as he says they cannot possibly work without the lead 
I admire anyone who at least tries to earn a living, it is not the people calling who are to blame, it is the people who employ them !
Rant over.