survey phonecalls, unsolicited "cold calls" etc.

[Brianne]

Re: survey phonecalls

One way that works with Irish companies is the following, and this was told to me by a person who worked in a call centre. Interrupt the speil and say that as one of your family works for a market research company , this precludes you from taking the call. Has worked for me. Like previous poster, I am ex directory and I queried the person who told me this as to how my number was coming up, who then told me about these random diallers that they use. I only get about three calls a year so its not a problem.

 

[Buffett]

Re: survey phonecalls

Buy a nice loud whistle and keep it handy by the phone. Very effective and guarantees no future calls .

 

[truthseeker]

Re: survey phonecalls

Was at a funeral recently - missed 9, yes 9 calls from private number, became worried at the sheer volume of calls in an hour long period, answered call 10.

"Hello can I speak to truthseeker please?"

"May I say who is calling"

"Whoever, from NTL"

"One moment please"

beeep beeep beeep beeep beeep...... and I switched the phone off for most of the rest of the evening.

 

[Janet]

Resurrecting an old thread as it's close to what I want to ask about.

I had never heard of those random dialling programs before but just got a phone call from someone claiming to be from Millward Brown and wanting to speak to the males of the house for the survey. I asked how she had gotten the number and was told it's randomly generated by a computer program. I'm kind of horrified that's allowed but how and ever. Reading through this and another thread, there was a link to ComReg on dealing with unwanted calls from direct marketing companies: [broken link removed]
I wanted to make sure I know what actually is and is not allowed before writing to complain (the caller did offer to give me a freephone number to call to verify that she really was calling from Millward Brown but I declined and told her I'd complain in writing - still not sure how me phoning a number she gives me would prove anything to me). From that link what stands out to me is the following:

Mobile phone users
Mobile phone numbers are automatically protected from direct marketing calls by the E privacy regulations 2011. Direct marketing companies must have your prior consent before contacting you on your mobile.
If you want to allow direct marketers to contact you in this way, you can call your mobile service provider and ask that your number be made available to direct marketers.

She did call me on my mobile phone - although I've lived in Germany for seven years now I still keep my Irish number going as it's easiest for people to keep in touch with me. I don't mind paying the 79c to receive the calls from family and friends but don't want to have to pay for people doing surveys to phone me. At any rate, I decided to phone Vodafone to make sure that I didn't, at some stage in the past, opt in to receiving these types of phone calls. After more than 20 minutes on hold/on the phone with a nice chap called Geoffrey, I have found out that apparently Vodafone can only stop me from being contacted by Vodafone/companies working on behalf of Vodafone, which isn't really what the comreg information says. The only other thing he could offer was to block the number for me but since it was a private number, that's not possible. Has anyone ever contacted their mobile phone provider to opt into (or out of) calls from direct marketers?

 

[Leo]

Companies carrying out surveys are not direct marketing, so are exempt from that legislation.

 

[Janet]

Companies carrying out surveys are not direct marketing, so are exempt from that legislation.

Interesting. Thanks for that. Although it's kind of disappointing that only cold calls trying to sell you something are covered by the legislation because, to be honest, any cold calls are kind of annoying (to me). I sent off an email to ComReg yesterday querying the situation anyway. If they report back anything to me other than that, I'll come back and let ye know.
Thanks again.

 

[Kerrigan]

Please do let us know the outcome. I've being getting quite a lot of calls from well known companies lately and recently had a quite pushy surveyor call to my address on numerous occasions because "they couldn't get me" anytime they knocked. Again I was supposedly randomly picked. The questions were quite intrusive and I could have kicked myself for partaking in it; all about illegal drugs. This particular surveyor was calling in the day and evening time and leaving constant notes. She politely informed me she would not have got paid if I hadn't have answered the questions. Last Sunday took the biscuit when I received another call for another survey.

 

[Leo]

Please do let us know the outcome. I've being getting quite a lot of calls from well known companies lately and recently had a quite pushy surveyor call to my address on numerous occasions...

We're talking phone calls here.

 

[stefg]

Over the weekend I got a strange call on the landline. The number is ex-directory and we don't use the landline much at all so we don't give out the number so I was surprised when the phone rang. When I answered the caller said they were looking for Mr. O'Neill (no O'Neills at our address) so I told him he had the wrong number and he then asked who he was speaking to. I again told him there is no one with name here and he had the wrong number but he repeatedly asked for my name and I refused to give it. He then told me that he had to update his database so he needed my name but I refused and told him he had no business with me so my name is irrelevant and he hung up abruptly.

His insistence on getting my name made me suspicious and it seems to me that this is a cold calling technique to get people's names for their marketing campaigns. I suspect that they call numbers asking for a name they know is not there and just using this as a way to gather information.

I forgot to ask who he was representing unfortunately so I can't follow up.

I would advise people not to give their name / details over the phone when people claim to have called the wrong number.

 

[Grizzly]

Despite being ex directory with Eircom and an instruction with Eircom not to cold call me, I got a phone call from Red Sea asking me to participate in a survey on behalf of Eircom? I had recently moved from Eircom to Vodafone and they wanted to know why I had moved. I told them.....