Defence against silent phone calls
Discussion
www.silentguard.co.uk
Recommended by BT apparently.
Recommended by BT apparently.
silentguard said:
Companies using predictive dialers for outgoing customer contact are causing a major problem in that a percentage (at least 5%) of the calls made by predictive dialers are delivered as a silent call, as there is no available agent for the call to be processed by. This often results in the called person calling the BT,NTL or Telewest Nuisance Call Bureau, as they are unaware of why these calls are being made, and are often concerned that they may be malicious.
By registering your home telephone number on this web site you will be added to a database that is used by the major telemarketing companies who use predictive dialers, therefore reducing the chance of you receiving silent calls.
Your telephone number is retained on the database for 12 months and to extend this simply register again after this period.
So how do this company have a list of all the firms that use predictive diallers?
Its a software product available from literally thousands of vendors.
An easier way to achieve exactly the same thing, without giving your telephone number to a commercial entity is screen your calls with an answerphone.
When a dialler hears the beep it drops the call.
Oh and its a very very very very badly setup dialler that will dial and present a call to no agent, whoever tuned that needs shooting.
Its a software product available from literally thousands of vendors.
An easier way to achieve exactly the same thing, without giving your telephone number to a commercial entity is screen your calls with an answerphone.
When a dialler hears the beep it drops the call.
Oh and its a very very very very badly setup dialler that will dial and present a call to no agent, whoever tuned that needs shooting.
s2gonzo said:
Isnt this what the TPS does anyway?
Havent had 1 marketing call since registering (Well ok, did have one, and they f**ked off sharpish when I interupted them to inform of my TPS registration)
TPS is brilliant and works perfectly in my experience.
Unfortunately you can't use it for business numbers and I get plagued by the bastards. I have now resorted to extreme obscenity (difficult to imagine I know
) to which they usually retort "there's no need to use that sort of language" after which they get some more. That usually does the trick but there are thousands of the w*nkers.Plotloss said:
So how do this company have a list of all the firms that use predictive diallers?
Nope, Silentgard is a list purchased by companies who use call systems liable to make silent calls. I have no idea how many companies subscribe, probably a small percentage of those making the calls.
Gareth
unrepentant said:
Isnt this what the TPS does anyway?
Havent had 1 marketing call since registering (Well ok, did have one, and they f**ked off sharpish when I interupted them to inform of my TPS registration)
TPS is brilliant and works perfectly in my experience.
Unfortunately you can't use it for business numbers and I get plagued by the bastards. I have now resorted to extreme obscenity (difficult to imagine I know
CTPS = Corporate Telephone Preference Service
unrepentant said:
Unfortunately you can't use it for business numbers and I get plagued by the bastards.
We get spates of them here, 99% are Indian call centres touting phone services. A couple have extremely agressive scripts and as soon as I realise it is one of these I just say "Ok, I'm hanging up now" over the top of them and hang up.
If you have time one idea is to say "Oh, yes I know who you could speak to. I'll just put you through to our hanging up department" ..bzzzzzzzzzz
Gareth
Since we moved house, we were issued a new number and went straight onto TPS, as well as withholding our number and getting caller ID. We don't get anything, apart from direct calls from pakistan, and somebody who thinks we are a fax number! The only person who does call is my mother 
shadytree said:
By registering your home telephone number on this web site you will be added to a database that is used by the major telemarketing companies who use predictive dialers
So does that mean you'll loads of numpty sales calls instead? (have I read that correctly)
That's how I interpreted it too.
I signed up to one of those BT registers that is supposed to prevent cold calls - didn't work for me.
I have heard that if you pick up the 'phone to hear the 'tell-tale' silence, hit the # key several times and hang up. Supposedly this confuses the
out of the dialler software and it spits your number out of the system.
Worth a try if you are too busy to wind up the lazy, good-for-nothing, spunkbubble on the other end of the line...
I have heard that if you pick up the 'phone to hear the 'tell-tale' silence, hit the # key several times and hang up. Supposedly this confuses the
out of the dialler software and it spits your number out of the system. Worth a try if you are too busy to wind up the lazy, good-for-nothing, spunkbubble on the other end of the line...
unrepentant said:
Unfortunately you can't use it for business numbers and I get plagued by the bastards. I have now resorted to extreme obscenity (difficult to imagine I know
I once got called by some Geordie bint at BT, and used what I guess now is called the "Unrepantant" method.
Unfortunately she knew more swear words than I did.
So, use with caution, kids!
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