On the 1st of June 2016 a goverment inititive going by the name of Bloctel will launch.
Consumers will be able register for free at http://www.bloctel.gouv.fr (will be activated June 2016) and add their land line and mobile numbers to a database.
Telemarketers will be required to update their databases once a month with the list of blocked numbers. Repeat offenders risk financial penatlies. More...
I am personally a little sceptial that this will be adhered to but I do hope it will work, we recieve numerous cold calls throughout the week and occasionally weekend at any time of the day until around 8.30pm. Are you bothered by these types of calls? Do you think this service will perform?
Orange seem to have no appetite for stopping these calls but in many cases, the calls are from overseas numbers anyway. I wonder if the French Government will have any sanctions capability against these offshore companies so I guess it will be of little or no effect.
I'm told there is a BT device one can purchase which 'filters' calls and only lets through those whose number is recognised by the device...
The alternative (which we have considered many times) is just to unplug the blasted phone from the deadbox and only plug it back in when we want to use it.
I have had and still receive annoying cold calls. Sometimes when I answer the reply is simply "goodbye" said in English, but it comes from a French number which is constantly changing, I have noted most of the numbers connecting to this call, and they seem to change almost daily. I originally logged the calls with Pacitel, which is supposed to block the calls, to no effect.
Let us all hope that Bloctel works. We shall await results
The majority of calls we receive tend to come from Senegal, Morocco, Mali or Bordeaux. The numbers are shown on our phone and nearly all occur around midday. I just ignore them.
I hope so! And thank you so much for circulating this useful information. I'll defintely sign up, but I'm also sceptical. My mother in the UK is subscribed to something similar, but alot of telemarketeers ignore it and she still gets a high volume of marketing calls and for an elderly person who spends a lot of time alone at home and relies on the phone for social contact, it simply constitutes harassement. I'm a middle-aged, self-employed person, so I also spend a lot time alone at home and all the cold calls infuriate me. I've stopped picking up the phone if the number looks suspect and for this reason I missed an 'assistance verte' call from our elderly neighbour: if she has a fall or is otherwise in difficulty, she has is an emergency button to press that generates an automatic phonecall to our house. I didn't pick up so she got six pompiers instead ... Definitely more fun for her than I would have been but a bit of a waste of resources.
I feel sorry for the callers - what a terrible job. But can this way of marketing possibly have much success any more? I'm amazed that it still continues in such volume. Also, I'm getting increasing numbers of automated calls that just cut off, including a particularly creepy one, where when you pick up, an automated voice says 'Goodbye' and then the line goes dead. I'd be interested to know if anyone else gets this one and/or knows if it's associated with any sort of scam, etc,?
We got so many such calls on our Orange line that we have cancelled it. The Numericable VOIP line is not listed in the directory so get no cold calls. I think France has waited too long for this, but if the UK TPS is anything to go by, it won't make much difference as most irritating calls come from abroad. Quite how anyone expects to win business by playing a recorded message is beyond me, but we were getting 3 or 4 a week, some from psychics! The silent calls are creepy, but account for the majority of cold calls as the computer doing the dialling clearly isn't supported by enough humans at the call centre. Like Anna, I wonder why most of them bother. What I really don't understand is how come the telephony provider can't tell where the calls are coming from and block the lot - or would this lose them too much income? I guess we are the "resources", they are the customers of BT and Orange, in which case why are our line rentals so high?
I'm still in the UK and the governments similar attempt here failed. Most unsolicited calls are from overseas and not get attable legally.
We had so many that we bought a BT set which incorporates a system called "trueCall".
Highly recomended if available in France. Blocks all nuisance calls.
Anyone in your phone book comes straight through.
Anyone not in your phone book has to "announce" their call. Genuine callers do and you can choose to accept or decline.
Non genuine callers don't, you can tell because the phone rings once, the caller hears the message. Genuine callers announce themself and the phone rings again, you listen to the announcement and accept or decline.
Non genuine don't bother so you know you've had such a call. Check the log and it's either withheld or from overseas.
I bought a 4 station DECT set with anserwphone on ebay
The BT system sounds great but running a B&B etc so lots of calls coming in from unknown numbers, it could be even more tiresome than the unsolicited calls. Mine always come in when up a ladder, in the shower or just started kneading bread!! By the way, most of my sales calls originate in France so I will give Bloctel a try and hope for the best.
There are various gadgets to connect up to your phone line to block these pests. Myself, I'm amazed that more folk aren't just downright rude to these people and give them a piece of their mind, after all, what have you got to lose, they're the ones invading your privacy?
It must be worth their while pestering complete strangers, that is to say they must manage to get enough gullible folks to buy in. Whilst working in London in the 90s, we used to be greeted every morning by all the fax paper spilled all over the floor from such pests - after such annoyance, why on Earth would they then imagine that we'd then want to buy their products?
Our problem is that most "marketing" calls are from automated dialers that hang up after a few rings. The intention is that you call back, and pay heavily for the privelge. We check these numbers on http://www.numeroinconnu.fr/numero/. The new law won't affect this illegal activity at all. The callers are crooks. So even by registering with Bloctel, which we will do, we will only reduce by about 10% of the unwelcome calls.
The best policy is never answer the phone! It is so liberating. The nuisance calls seem to mostly come from the Paris area. If somebody really needs to speak to you, they will just leave a message.
Sometimes if I want a bit of fun I answer and tell them that the owner of the house is in the garden and that I will go and search for them....the caller always hangs up! :-)
Signed up today! We were with Pacitel before, and we have ticked the "anti-prospection" box (liste orange) with Orange. But still some calls come through, let's see if this helps.
We also registered first thing today. It may stop 20% of our unwanted calls; the rest are criminals using automatic diallers. It won't stop them, unfortunately. I noticed that providers in the UK have started blocking the worst offenders, so there's hope yet. We've been on Orange's "liste orange" since day 1, but it really has had little effect. Like many people we've just stopped answering unknown callers, and rely on the answer machine.
We were relying on the answering machine only, and a caller display which failed to indicate UK mobiles but at least told us if a UK land-line was calling. I do think the onus should be on the provider to block calls from auto-dialling systems, they should be easy enough to spot. I can't believe the advertisers can really make enough successful calls to justify the inconvenience, but they must do or they wouldn't bother. In the UK I'd love to block all calls from India and Pakistan, that would kill all the accident claims calls at a stroke. We used to do this with emails, why not phone calls? We have given up our Orange line after ten years, purely because of the annoying ad calls. We transferred our 08442 number to the Numericable number, we aren't listed in the directories and we get no sales calls whatsoever now. When we have to give a phone number with an order we use a French mobile number in France and the 08442 one in the UK: so many businesses bar calls to 0844 numbers that nobody rings us!
When I add a phone N° to the list of riends, etc. in the phone, I'm able to change the ringing tone. When someone on the list calls I know because the ring changes. If it doesn't I ignore it and wait for a message if it's genuine. Until today I got several unsolicited calls a day, often from N°s that are obviously fraudulent (e.g. only 5 digits). Today I've had none. Anyway I'm going to register on Bloctel - if we don't cooperate with attempts to stop it, it will never stop.
I never answer the phone. Yes, whoever it is can leave a message ...and yes, I pick up the phone.. only if/when I know the caller, and want to accept the call. I can pull the plug on anyone else...Why isn't everyone using their answering machine?
We do the same if we don't know who's calling, Jeanette, and we let the answerphone get it. If it's the rare ex-directory person who knows we don't answer "secret" numbers, they know to speak, then we'll pick up.
The point is that we shouldn't have to be compromised because of these selfish cold-callers; they ought to be stopped, once and for all. It's easy enough to define what is a cold-call and one that is justified after all. The former should be an offence.
Not sure it's be a good idea to attempt to create controlling legislation to protect against diff. kinds of communication. Some kind of "spam filter", for phones, seems to have been invented already, the new wave of phone machines, I guess, could have that gadget as standard kit. At the moment, it is still an expensive add-on, I think...
Sadly I fear that the new system, like the past ones (of which there are several) will fail - for the simple fact that they seem to rely on databses - though many of these calls are to numbers that have been 'automatically generated' by random number software (05+?? ?? ?? ??) so are not extracted from a database. The give away is often the pause when you pick up - that's the software saying, 'we've got a live one here' (as obviously many of the random generated numbers will be unattributed) and waiting for an operator to get on the line. How can you regulate against that ? It's a curse of our times
Hmmmm.. so many horrific and terrible things ...happening at this minute...for so many millions of people, around the world...
....I'm very sorry for all those distressed by nuisance calls, but there's no way at all for me to waste any passion on a bit of noisy plastic ...and the people who misuse it...
I cannot think of that as any kind of *curse of our times*!!!! A cheap answering machine serves well enough.
