Cold Calling- whats the law? Is it ever enforced?

Cardinal Richelieu

At least 3 times a week I get unsolicited phone calls to my house phone from a wide variety of organisations, nearly always between the hours of 6-9pm trying to sell me a variety of wonderful products from Windows updates in an Indian accent or great deals on home improvements, to charity raffle tickets for Breast Cancer Charities. I just had 2 in the space of 5 mins this evening.:mad:

What is the actually law on this? Is it still legal to cold call? If not, is the law actually enforced as more than half of these calls appear to be from callers with UK or Indian subcontinent accents?

CIARAN_BOYLE

legal but you can take steps to opt out of cold calls

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer_affairs/telecommunications_and_postal_services/dealing_with_unwanted_telephone_sales_calls.html

BostonB

Some of them are probably scam's and have your number in a database illegally, or they are just ringing random numbers.

elefant

I believe they're illegal if you're ex-directory, unless they aren't selling anything and are only calling for market research purposes.

Marcusm

Unfortunately, the fact that they're offshore means that you're unlikely to be able to use any legal means to stop them. i generally engage with them a few times a month (PPI misselling and computer viruses seem to be in vogue) and try to get them to believe that I don't have the correct characteristics so that they'll mark me down as a no hoper.

If they irritate me, they get either the hairdryer treatment or the inquisatorial one. Neither is generally appreciated.

coylemj

These callers are so sophisticated that a lot of them use machines to cold call and they only route the call to an agent when you pick up the phone and say 'hello', this ensures that the agents dont spend half their time listening to phones ringing that don't get answered.

One tactic that I used before dumping my landline altogether was to look at the caller's number and if I didn't recognise it or it was hidden, I would lift the phone and say nothing. If there was nothing at the other end i.e. if the party calling me didn't say 'hello', I knew that I was being called by a machine so I hung up.

Their equipment will typically figure that because the phone was answered but no human spoke, it's probably a line that's being used for a fax machine or a computer modem and they'll never call it again.

If you have friends who call you from an ex-directory landline, just tell them to prefix your number with '142' and their number will display on your equipment, that way you can greet them with a friendly 'hello' instead of silence! The GSM equivalent is '*31#'.

dahamsta

That's not sophisticated tbh, autodiallers and call routers have been around for decades.

The ones that sound like they're trying to sell you software are often actually trying to get you to install a trojan horse on your computer, for bank passwords, credit card numbers, identity theft. If I have time, I tend to lead these guys on with a gombeen act, to cost them time and money. They catch on pretty quick though.

Anyway, the relevant law is the Data Protection Act and amendments, and you should be able to get yourself off Irish lists without too much trouble -- the link posted earlier should in turn have a link to the Data Protection Commissioners website, where you can file a complaint if necessary.

You'll need to deal with the foreign calls a different way, with the tips mentioned above, obfuscation, obnoxiousness, and failing all of that an air horn or rape alarm. Honestly though, your best bet is to keep known numbers in your address book, and screen everything else to voicemail.