Silent Telephone ?!

Hello all...


(i know i'm not alone in this...)


we get cold/nuisance calls constantly - 5/6 times a day at least.


it's a new phone line and the number has only been given to our parents and our boss. we have never, ever given it out verbally or in writing or online to anyone. plainly it's orange who has sold our details...


my new idea is to buy a phone that doesn't ring out loud! a normal phone that you can mute the ring - then the people who have the number can leave a message when they ring (christmas, birthdays etc!!!)


ideas?


x teresa


An Update, a Triumph!...

after all the chatter and helpful replies we have bought a new phone - a triumph

we have it set to a permanent 'night mode' - which means it does not ring. it only rings when the numbers we've programmed in on a special list call us (6 so far - you can put in 200)

you can programme in other numbers to show by name who called - on a 'non-special' list... they can leave a message - you can record your own message too, and it shows other calls by number.

it was super-easy and intuitive to programme, and i can't tell you what a joy it is to have the house silent, and know that if the phone rings it's someone we want to speak to!

we bought it from amazon france (via svn!) Panasonic KX-TGD320 - e65 well spent

cannot recommend highly enough if you are plagued by cold callers

x teresa

Good luck with it Teresa but also get on the Liste Rouge as well.

thanks John...

I think you probably don't get too many calls because you've had your number for 12 years... selling people's phone numbers wasn't such a big deal then! but like you say you do get a few 'sequential' calls

our problem started the day after we got our new very private phone number - it had PLAINLY been sold on.

anyway... the silent phone (?? !!) is my answer. i'll report back

x teresa (down time between rugby, off to watch france hammer the tous noirs)

We've been on the liste Rouge since we installed the line in 2004. I only get maybe one or two dodgy calls a month and I reckon it's only because call centres are now using an automatic dialer that runs through numbers sequentially so they don't actually need real, live phone numbers. When a call is answered it only then transfers the to an agent. That's why there's a slight delay after one answers the call. Lately some of the calls have been recorded messages so I guess the call centres are feeling the pinch and trying to reduce costs.

I smashed the phone in the end as I was getting 7/8 cold callers a day !

I use Skype too now and send letters to my Grandparents lol.

I have never given out my landline number, and when I arrived ten months ago, couldn't cope with a telephone call in French anyway. Then I tried answering in English, which puts off all cold callers, in my experience. Nowadays I usually just let it ring.

That's it. Peace.

pacitel.fr have a free service that will block many calls

only a couples of minutes or so, after my previous reply my phone rang, it was a woman this time, again I caught the word terminus, … quoi terminus? she probably heard my English accent, but then asked if it was numero privé. when i asked again what terminus, the phone was put down.

I’ve also this morning received a reply back from a regular but special interest uk website, which effectively had blocked me from access, I emailed and response today was my IP address was showing as PARIS and they’ve had a lot of scammers from Paris IP’s. my IP location through ORANGE should be showing NANTES. So what’s all that about? my account has been reinstated so I’ll have to give it a go!

Julia that probably one of the stupid ‘random generating number’ systems doing that and as soon as I answer in English, the call is cut!

oh no we don’t Brian! well I don’t know!

yes mines a Gigaset, and lots are unknown numbers or withheld ones, it’s as Doreen described. I have to pick messages up from orange, when phone is flashing and shows the messages bit on it?
Yes, Teresa both handset speaker and ringing volume setting go from 1 to 5, 5 being v loud for me! 1 I almost can’t hear. I Just tried it!

Brian you are writing my exact experiences also. I have a list as long as your arm of supposed missed calls on my mobile, the numbers I need to know are all named on it. the house phone is necessary for me that’s the number I give the various hospital depts, or businesses if neceary. the answerphone message for callers is short saying my name & leave a messagein French 1st then English. I rarely have a message left and the phone rarely even rings now, I presume the French give up when they hear English after and vice versa for English friends who don’t the start of the message! The French, when it does ring and I answer, ask if I’m the ‘Terminus’?
2 mirnings ago I was on the phone to orange helpline, for 1hr 15 mins to an English speaking French woman In their technical department, because I had Problem with the Nokia Mobile supplied by them last year and added to my orange account, when a different annual mobile contract had finished.

Thought it would be simpler for me to have all on one account. WRONG! she couldn’t sort out the mobile problem, even got a French colleague from somewhere on conference as well. No joy, she promised to call back between 2 and 2.30pm that day, needless to say she didn’t, I’m still waiting!

I was going to put this info on the discussion that came up again the other day, where a member was compiling a list of complaints over orange problems and their customer service! hopefully she’ll pick up on these now.

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) in the UK is a free service that does the same as the US service. However, read both sites and they will tell you somewhere down in the bits that appear after sane people are bored to death of reading their information, that blocking new marketing companies and their call centres is impossible until they are registered, especially foreign ones that use many numbers and also 'bounce' off proxies so that the prefix is not always the same. However in France it is possible to join Liste Orange for a charge, Liste Rouge too if that still exists, SFR lets you have 'withheld number' calls blocked automatically and that is about it. telecom.gouv.fr who come under Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (Ministry of Culture and Communication) apparently have their lines and enquiry portal on their site virtually blocked by people complaining about cold calls every day. They are a bit slow (see that tortoise speeding past!!) getting their act together but they may just get round to it when somebody really important gets very pi**ed off receiving cold calls and tells them to wake up.

I didn’t realize France was still in the Dark Ages when it came to this. In the States and Spain I just needed to add phone numbers to a blocked list on my phone service. Note them and add them. Also in the US, you simply add your land line and cell numbers to a federal registry of DO NOT CALL. This blocks 99% of robo-calls and telemarketers. France, with all its rules and intrusiveness, has not established some agency to deal with this? Albeit it would take more than a simple sign up online in France — no, 10 forms in triplicate and you’d still be told you are missing one!

exactly Suzanne - we NEVER answer the landline phone. we never give anyone the number (only our mobiles)

the 3 people who have the landline number know they must leave a message... but we do use the phone all the time.

As I've said the cold calls are annoying, but they don't bother me - it's the constant ringing! (while we're eating!!!)

x t

I am so fed up with the nuisance calls that I never answer our landline unless I recognise the number as one of 2 people in our village who use it. The cold callers always phone in meals times - visitors think I'm weird as I let it ring but I work on the basis that anyone who really wants to speak to me will call my mobile or leave a message (which I can pick up at my leisure on my email).

I suspect some computer rings lots of random numbers at once and assigns a person to whichever picks up first, so if you pick up a bit later you get either silence or that recorded 'good-bye'... That said I've just had some wretched girl trying to flog me wine so I have told her we are a teetotal household & that wine is a scourge etc etc I don't think that particular marketer will be ringing me again.

The whole point is to be annoying and a general pain in the posterior..

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But what is the point of these calls? To find out when you are home, or to find out whether the number is active and valid?