Cold calls - getting stupid and should be illegal..

[Anonymous]

Cold calls are becoming more and more common. They are driving me nuts. I get "injury lawyers", "PPI claims", "debt consolidation" and every other low life industry.

This was frustrating enough at home.. but has really reached a whole new level while I am spending 5 weeks in the Netherlands.

I get 2 cold calls per day on average. Which puts me in a strange predicament - I can either answer the phone each time and build up international charges for recieving these calls in another country. Or I can ignore every call and risk missing out on emergencies or business. 

How can someone be put into that corner where I can't answer my own phone. There must be laws enforced soon. In fact, i wouldn't be surprised if I do answer these calls abroad, I could potentially have a leg to stand on to charge it back to the cold callers. After all, its their "bad information" that cost me.

Aside from that, I guess the purpose of this message is to find out if theres any cool tips anyone has. There must be an app out there (im on iphone) that you can block numbers (not that useful as I dont get calls from the same numbers twice usually). Or even better, an app that automatically bans numbers that have had a certain amount of complaints.

Cheers guys 🙂

ps. I'm no newbie when it comes to technology. So I am most certainly careful with not putting my real number into online forms and also always untick check boxes that ask if they can share my info. 

[Bambino]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks... I have actually not heard of phonepayplus - I had a little look at their website and can't really figure out why and where I'd register my number with them. Is it a way to turn my phone into a premium number? Therefore, cold callers won't try it?

Yes changing my number, as @Cleoriff suggested is unfortunately not an option. Well... I guess it is. I had the number since I was 12 years old - now I am 30.

On one hand, i dont want to be bullied out of a number Ive successfully kept my whole life - lol. Also, I think, because my number is in the public domain (on my website ect) due to the nature of my business, I feel like changing it, will only be a short term fix.

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If your phone number is on your website, it's open season, and there's very little, if anything you can do about it. Once you put it in the public domain you opened the door to every lowlife cold caller on the planet. Changing your number would only temporarily slow things down until your new number, if you keep it on your site, did the rounds and you'd be back where you started.