An odd phone call

I had a wonderful cold call last week [a bit off-thread I know]. A young man called to ask if I was bothered at all by cold calls. Perhaps you can imagine my reply

Poor Mr Grumpy, I am tempted to try him again.

No, must resist the temptation!

We used to be one digit out from the local, very big hospital and a big busy local garage!

Oops, should have added ....she was out when you rang back!

Perhaps it was his wife ringing but she was out and only Mr Grumpy was home

1471 is used by people who have not paid for caller display.
Or by those, like me, who cbb to set it up

We really should make an effort, it's just so easy to dial 1471 then decide whether or not to phone back.

1471 is used by people who have not paid for caller display.

Our number used to be 5353. The local taxi company was 3535. The number of times we took calls for the taxi company was incredible. When we moved house we offered our number to the taxi company but they couldn’t be bothered so I imagine the people who bought our house had the same problem.

We used to live round the corner from Sue Townsend, we would get the odd misdialled call for her until Adrian Mole was televised on a Saturday evening then we were deluged.
On a lighter note, we frequently get a call at 10am on a Sunday, it's an elderly gent who shouts " Is that you Kirsty darling". He always apologises profusely, after a few calls and gentle questioning it transpired that Kirsty darling was his granddaughter who he rang every week. He explained that his eyesight was poor and he had shaky hands and granddaughters number was one digit off ours. I assured him it was OK and now when he get me by mistake he and I just make a joke if it.

Thank you for your replies

I seem to have lost my post - perhaps it's on another thread - crossed wires!

I am beginning to feel sorry for him but surely BT should be able to sort it out quickly if he reports it - and if he has a log of all the people who call his number that would surely prompt them to act urgently

Talking of nuisance calls I’ve found a way to get round some of them. If I fhavd to give my phone number for anything I just give my mobile number. This is protected by a FREE call blocker that blocks any call not on my call list (ie friends, family and other numbers I’ve programmed into my phone) instead it asks them to leave a message.

I’d say 90% of the calls it blocks are scammers, PPI, cold callers, etc. Genuine callers always leave a message and then I can just ‘unblock’ those at the press of a button.

It’s such a simple solution,

Yes, apparently scammers can ‘clone’ someone’s phone number and that’s what shows up on 1471 or other recall systems. I read about it somewhere, once, I think.

Poor man.

I think the scammers are finding new ways of getting round the regulations these days. Three times my home landline has rung and when I've answered it's been the very end of a recorded message saying 'cannot be connected' - they're all different numbers. I've googled them and they're listed as PPI nuisance calls. It's extremely annoying and worrying for older people who might not have access to the net. Some years ago I took a call from a complete stranger who asked for my son who lived in London at the time. Perplexed I obviously said he wasn't here - it turned out he'd lost his phone and this person had found it - our number was in it so he rang to try and get the phone back to him. I was able to arrange for them to meet up for him to return it.

There’s not much you can do about it unless he phones you again, then you’d have grounds to contact BT - although I doubt they’d do much about it. It could be his line has a fault and is shorting out somehow, somewhere and his phone was dialling random numbers. You may not have been the only person phoning him back.

We changed everything to Sky a while ago and now have Sky Shield. It’s brilliant. (And free.) I’ve put in all the numbers in my phone book and everyone else has to announce their name before the phone will ring. When I answer and hear who it is I have the option of adding the person to my list, just taking the call once or blocking them. Not a single nuisance call since.

I'm always quite mystified by this 1471 thing. The number that has rung is always shown on my phone - I don't have to do anything to see who has rung, except press a button and I get a list of callers. Even my mother in the UK has this function on her phone.

Anyway, this list I can call up will show me a number, but the cold callers, who are not allowed by law to suppress their number, have found a way of getting the call to show a fictitious number. Usually if you try to call these numbers back, you should get a message that the number is non-existent or unavailable, but in this case they may have channelled the call, by mistake or not, through a real number - so the number that shows up as your last caller is unfortunately not a fictitious one.

So lots of people will be getting calls apparently from this number, but the owner of the number had nothing to with it. If they all call that number back, it would become very annoying. No wonder the chap on the other end was cross.

If we get a call from a number we don't know, we don't answer it, just type the number into Google and read what other people say about it - they usually warn you that it's someone trying to sell something. Then we put "don't answer" as the name against that number and we know next time that it's another unwanted call.

How about he d just had a series of cold calls and had rung one number thinking he knew them (got you by mistake) then thought you were another cold caller when you rang back

It could be. When we first moved in we seemed to be on a party line with a house behind us - our newly installed phone would ring and I would hear the neighbour chatting on the phone to someone

BT also gave us an old 'discontinued' number which had belonged to a local business which had shut down - with often hilarious results. However, I was never rude to anyone who rang up asking for entertainment for their party/wedding/charity do etc!

Ages ago, our phone number was just one number different from a local garage. We often had people trying to book a service or repair. Maybe something similar has happened to this chap's number?

Obviously I wasn't the only one to have phoned him to have made him so irate!

Perhaps crossed wires somewhere - but had he given me the chance to explain that I was just returning his call, he could have then complained to BT.

Usually I ignore it but I started worrying about elderly relatives in that area and whether or not someone was trying to get a message to us, then rushing off to hospital. My mind was going into over-drive.

Yes I would ignore it. If someone needs to speak to you they will get in touch. Perhap they get all the calls for the local taxi/take away etc and are just fed up!

Sounds like a wrong number.
I would just have ignored it. I have to keep telling OH that if it's important enough someone will leave a message or ring back.

That is perplexing Jalima . Clearly it isn't worth ringing the number again, but you could perhaps send a text message to the number explaining that you were simply returning a call from that number. I really don't know what else to suggest and can't begin to imagine what he is so uptight about. Obviously someone, somewhere playing silly buggers with his number...

sorry - phone the number back.