Receiving cold calls

I blow a whistle down the phone.

I get a daily call on my mobile which I ignore. I don't understand why they don't give up- its been going on for a year.

I have inundated too - and all from different numbers, some of which have been blocked by us. Yet they all use the same recording!

The latest has been an indian voice giving himself and English name, from what looks like a british number but has in fact been bounced from India. They ask if you would like to pay a sum to have annoying calls blocked. I asked him to start with his own. I then looked up the number, once I had slammed down the phone, and found that they are very persistent and try to get you to give them your credit card number in a very aggressive way. I only picked the phone up (rather than let it go to voicemail as normal) because I was expecting my sister to call me back, so was very annoyed with myself. That number was 08451 297936.

Re phone calls regarding my computer playing up- I say that I do not own one and would have no idea what to do with one if I did. That gets rid of them. The other is to put the "poor pensioner" hat on if money is requested for any reason. This works particularly well if it is a cold caller at the front door. I live alone and own my house but I have a non esistent son who lives here too when the need arises. I have a fertile imagination.

It's the various "government scheme" calls (windows, renewable energy etc) which annoy me. You can't speak to them as they are recorded messages, and if you wait until the end and press the button to be taken off their calling list it doesn't seem to have any effect. I would love to ask them which government they are speaking about, as I cannot believe that these "schemes" are official in any way. They all come up as Withheld or Unavailable on our phone, and usually we don't answer those calls, but that doesn't help to stop them either. This month so far we have had 38 calls on our house phone. 4 of these have been real calls and the rest have been Withheld, Unavailable or International. We have been registered with the TPS for years - not sure if that means it doesn't work, or that it would be even worse without them.

I now that it is going to be easier to report nuisance calls, but what do you do if there is no number to report?

If it's a machine we put the phone on one side until the machine finally disconnects. Two reasons. Firstly the longer the call the more it costs the cold calling company. Secondly whilst they're on our line they can't be annoying someone else. We barely use our landline so not a problem to us.

If it's a human I say do I need to say no 4 or 6 times before you're allowed to say goodbye. Then I repeat the phrase 'no thank you, I'm not interested in....' If this doesn't work I put them on hold and put the phone next to the ipod playing Debbie Harry singing 'Hanging on the telephone' and leave it until they give up.

We have been TPS registered for many years and have a phone which is programmed to block calls from overseas and also any other numbers which offend us.
I very rarely swear but when I have been interrupted by the phone at a very inconvenient time I have been known to. I do not try to engage in any reasonable conversation with these cold callers and the amount of abuse I give depends just how much they have annoyed me. I am particularly merciless with the ones 'from Microsoft' telling me I have problems with my computer.
Normally, I am a very polite person but that goes out of the window when these people invade my house.