Worrying news item on our surgery website

That is very worrying. My mum is usually quite canny about marketing calls, etc., but she would be unlikely to think there was anything suspicious about someone purporting to be ringing from the surgery asking about her health. I think a lot of people might be taken in by such practices.

I thought I'd already registered her on the telephone preference service but she still gets some calls through. I must check again.

I've just checked tat we are on the TPS list and we are - not that this has stopped the calls from India!!

We now have the service that shows you who is ringing so you can choose whether to answer. Eleothan - you could try having this with your Mum - numbers that are keyed into your phone (like family, dentist etc.) show up as their name and all other calls as the number (or some say "International call"). That might help her.

About ninety per cent of calls to our phone are from "private callers" or "out of area" (i.e. abroad). I answer the private caller ones during school hours (if I hear the phone; I'm often don't when I'm working outside, for instance) because it might be Minibags's school (she's had some health problems and I've had to go and collect her a few times). Out of school hours I pick up the phone and say nothing. The scammy callers (often machines) just cut out when they don't hear a human voice.

The ones I miss I don't care about. If it was something important they'd leave a message.

I've found that they don't like a whistle being blown down the line!!! Funny that, can't think why.

Luckygirl Her sight is very poor. She can only just manage the very large numbers on her phone key pad.

I see the problem.

I had a call today from someone saying they were working with our GP practice to do with prescriptions. I said nothing and could tell she was reading from a script. She went on to say that she knew we had repeat prescriptions.
Eventually I said 'I think you've called us before and we want to manage our own prescription. Goodbye.'

The caller company wants to take over supply of medicines, to the detriment of local pharmacies. Last time it happened I was aerated enough to post on here about it and followed it up with my GP surgery. They assured me they never had and never would give out patient details. They gave me the number of someone at the local CCG to contact, which I did, but never had any reply.

This sounds an even worse scam Tegan. It really should be publicised so people are aware of it.

Would your mum be willing to pick up thr phone but say nothing until the person on the other end had identified themselves as someone she knows? If it's someone she doesn't know, perhaps she'd be best to hang up. Alternatively, if her hearing's allright, perhaps she could leave the message recorder to start and only pick up and speak to someone she knows.

Googling found a lot of surgeries putting out warnings about these people.

Eloethan Could you invest in a call blocker for your mother? Mine (£39.98) came with 200 known scamming/spamming numbers already blocked, and space for 1000 more, and whole categories of numbers can be blocked. You'd have to set up the parameters for her, but once that is done it would cut down the number of nuisance calls considerably. (For the first few days I was worried that the phone was on the blink, as it seemed to hardly ever ring - most of my calls had previously been nuisance ones)

There is a red button which you can press to block the number currently calling you, and if there are certain overseas numbers that you do want to get through, while keeping out the foreign spammers, you tell the potential caller a code to enter that lets them connect.

- It says on Amazon ".... is ideal if you don??t want any more silent calls, PPI calls, robo calls, recorded messages, overseas call centres, harassment calls, malicious calls, junk faxes, withheld numbers, international numbers, VOIP numbers and unavailable numbers. Companies which are selling by phone, using overseas call centres and automated sales lists are all pre-programmed which will minimise the sales calls you receive almost immediately."

I read that you have the Bible handy and start reading out of the Old Testament. That gets them off the phone.

Problem is where is the Bible, do we still have one somewhere?.

You could print some out from the internet, MargaretX. Probably easier to read as well!

If there are 200known scamming numbers why can't they be blocked for us by a higher power?

Thank you for all your helpful comments and information.

My phone can block 200 numbers, they are all used, we have resorted to labelling some numbers with scamboiler, scamppi and scamsolar.

Freedom of speech, stansgran You never know, there may be people somewhere who "want" to hear from them. And there isn't any higher authority which can block on every phone network - it would need equipment in each phone company. I don't think the phone networks would like such an organisation choosing their customers for them and censoring their traffic. Some of the phone companies do ban certain callers themselves though.