Advice on prank calls

[kimmie]

Can anyone shed a little advcice to me please????

 

We keep getting prank calls. Somebody is ringing the house phone, letting us answer and then putting the down. It always seems to be me answering the phone. They always seem to ring when i am in the house on my own. they have done a few times when my fiancee has been in. I cannot hear anything down the phone.

My fiancee has been getting private number calls on his mobile aswell.

But for a while now i have been feeling as if someone is there all the time, watching.

 

I am terrified and scared! I don't know what to do as teh owners of the house are away until the end of october, and im ill and not supposd to leave the house!

 

[Agent Orange]

I would suggest contacting BT or whoever provide your landline and get them to deal with it. There is a team at BT who will look into this and actively seek prosecution if they can trace the culprit. Look on the BT website under nuisance callers and you should be able to find something there.

[banesmabes]

Here's some advice from BT:

 

https://www.bt.com/customerservices/downloads/malicious_calls.pdf

 

They suggest registering with the Telephone Preference Service as the silent calls you are receiving may be from marketing companies. Have you ever heard anything when you get one of these calls? What does it say when you ring 1471?

[Agent Orange]

Here you go, more info here:

 

 

http://www.bt.com/customerservices/cust_details.jsp?parentcat=cs_malicious_calls&childcat=linkcs_malicious_calls_work_together

[kimmie]

The thing is they are not with BT, i believe they are with telewest!

 

Thanks anyway

xx

[Agent Orange]

The thing is they are not with BT, i believe they are with telewest!

 

Thanks anyway

xx

 

Oh right. I would contact telewest then and get them to pursue this complaint. They will probably have some sort of team like the one at BT and should investigate malicious/prank calls. Call their customer service number and see what they can do to stop these calls. Good luck!

[AtticusFinch]

Have you thought about picking up the phone and not saying anything until the caller speaks? If the caller is an acquaintance of yours or someone calling for a legitimate reason, chances are they'll probably say "hello?" themselves to see if the call has connected properly. You could even tell your friends and family that due to these prank calls, you'll now wait for the caller to speak.

 

The prank caller is probably getting off on the fact that you're getting frustrated by their silence. If you don't speak then they have to say something, and then they're taking the risk of giving themselves away. It reverses the control of the situation back to you.

 

[Camrat78]

What ever you do, don't rise to them. They'll get a kick out of it if you start shouting down the line at them. I had a speight of these a few months ago. I just sat on the other end of the line and didn't say a word, apart from once when I said I could wait all night as it was their phone bill!

 

The thing to do is try not to worry, if BT cant help then I'm sure Telewest can.

[chickywiggle]

sure your partners not having an affair?

[banesmabes]

The thing is they are not with BT, i believe they are with telewest!

 

Thanks anyway

xx

 

A lot of the tips in the BT leaflet will still be applicable though. You would just have to contact Telewest rather than BT if you needed any additional help.

 

What happens when you answer the phone? Is it silent and then goes dead? Or does it stay silent for a long time? Does the person then immediately ring back? What happens when you call 1471? It really could be just marketing calls you're getting - a lot of these companies use automated diallers that ring lots of people at once, but only the first few people to pick up actually get through to someone, whereas everyone else picks up to no one there.

 

Edit: Link to Telewest's page on this issue:

 

http://www.telewest.co.uk/html/telephone/phonesecurity/phonesecurity.html