Unwanted 'phone calls - "Goodbye"!

I am on Bloctel - :zipper_mouth_face:

Unless I have got it wrong… liste rouge is where the telephone number is not in the directory (??)…

In which case, no we are not on the Liste Rouge , but the majority of the annoying/spammy callers ARE !!! grrrrr…

The list rouge is (or at least was) administered by your service provider Stella. We used to get nuisance marketing calls and talked to Orange who put us on their list rouge and they diminished and eventually pretty well stopped. I still get the odd one so I’ll subscribe to Bloctel too. Thanks for the tip.

Another little job done…

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I hope it’s the genuine Bloctel site you’ve given your phone numbers to, otherwise you will be receiving more nuisance calls than ever! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Wow, that’d be a good scam. Though I trust my cyber security precautions, I’m a bit OCD about that, and backups. :slight_smile: I’ll let you know though if I’ve just committed cold call immolation.

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Why on earth would you be tempted to call a scammer in another country?
I get these and I actually thought it was my phone being clever and filtering them out after the first ring! Never occurred to me to call them back.

Apparently, a Russian lady is desperate to meet me and also, I have been chosen by a billionaire to receive £10.0000. All I have to do is either call their number or send my bank details and I’m rich or friends! with a nice lady. NO. I was not born yesterday and I am not particularly stupid. I am clever enough to push ‘delete’. Simples.

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Best of luck with these filters folks.

I changed our landline/internet in the summer from SFR to Orange, the extoled virtues of latter’s “list rouge” being one of the selling points, and we have been signed up with Bloctel for many years - in fact, I (re-)registered to make sure after the switch. However, we still receive up to 30 calls per day – 17 today before lunch – and rarely bother even to look at the number displayed (friends, rellies etc. in our phonebook have a different ringtone). I review all the missed calls on the Orange website each night.

Apart from the obvious, what really gets up my nose is the thought that some ancient acquaintances might be passing through Carcassonne (“give us a ring if you’re passing”) and try and contact us on the landline via Pages Blanc, perhaps from a service area or a hotel. This has happened 4 times to our knowledge over the years. We would have loved to have seen the callers each time.

I have tried my best to spread amongst such acquaintances, the notion that they should hang on beyond six rings when the answerphone will chime in (sales calls are apparently supposed to desist at six rings – the vast majority do). The arrival of a message on the Orange answerphone is immediately flagged up by email on our PCs and smartphones.

And back in the 50’s my folks would moan about ONE wrong call a week on a party line!

I received two unwanted phone calls on my mobile today. Both knew my name and purported to be from charities. Fondation this or that. One about respiratory diseases and the other from a man in a noisy room who I didn’t give long enough to tell me all the tedious details.
I blocked the numbers. Then I checked that I was up to date on Bloctel. That was OK but only seems to work when it’s a problem with enterprises trying to sell you stuff. That prompted me to look at the iphone settings and I discovered the “Silence unknown callers” setting. Any unknown number is silenced, sent to Voicemail, and shows up on the Recents list. I had no idea that setting existed. I don’t want to have to change my phone number, but maybe it would be a good idea…

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Problem is that it will silence delivery chaps who may then not be able to deliver. I find DHL and Amazon deliveries often call to say they’ll arrive in a minute or two. I’m not sure why but maybe as I have to be there to receive and sign?

Or the vet!!! :flushed:

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I know Susannah. I thought of that. But often I don’t get a call because of our thick stone walls. I hope a message will appear in that situation. We’ll see. I haven’t ordered anything at present…

In that case, the iPhone Silence Unkniwn Callers may be good. Saves you from stress and any fears.

Anyone genuine, in my experience this has included delivery men, will leave you a voicemail message. Of course, it may be so fast, heavily accented and garbled en route that it’s practically unintelligible but at least you can press Replay a few times.

Cold callers, spammers and creepy people will not be leaving messages, so it’s a pretty good filter.

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I am pleased that when we moved here we got our landline installed (Orange) and put on liste rouge at the same time. Not one single scam call in well over 10 years.

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I’m quite intrigued by this landline of which everyone speaks…

If you lived here, you wouldn’t be, John! Mobile connections are achieved by hanging out of the window :rofl:

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I have found the transcribe feature of Google translate (I’m sure their competitors all have similar features) a godsend in these situations. It often does a better job than my ears/ brain in not just translating the french to English but translating the garbled ‘noise’ into actual words, I assume because it’s trained to listen for and pick out the actual words in the general sound. You can replay as many times as you like, line by line if need be, until you get a translation of the whole thing. I try to do my own translating wherever possible not to get lazy, but in cases like this it’s incredibly useful.

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Here is a solution:-

Cold caller beware

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I had the sameproblem in Bretagne, my 500 year old house has one metre thick solid granite walls and the FREE engineer who called one time to sort out the internet also commisserated with solid stone walls and lack of mobile phone signals ashe was affected personally too. I used to have to go upstairs and open a window to talk to anyone! The reception down here is a little better but I try not to have much to do with mobile phones if I can help it and always give my landline number when required.

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I wouldn’t be without one, can’t bear mobile phones, you can never hear anyone and the screen goes off after a few seconds. I remember having to use public phone booths out in the middle of the village end of the 80’s before we got a landline in France and never had enough coins.