'Phone rings, voice with Indian accent says
Hullo is that Mr *****'
Me, 'Yes are you calling from microsoft?'
Him, 'Yes how did you know'
Me 'never mind'
Him,'This is David Thomas'
Me, 'why do you have a Welsh name and an Indian accent?
Him, 'I have an american accent'
Me, 'No you don't you have an Indian accent'
Him ' You have a problem with your computer'
Me. 'Thankyou I'll look into it goodbye'.
My quickest yet.
My idiot call today was cut short even quicker than that,
Phone rings, voice says, hello is that Mrs *******?
Me ,Yes
Her, I'm calling about the road accident that you may have had recently.
Me, Bulls**t
Phone down.
Not very lady like, but I'm sick of them, I get at least two a day , quite often I get more.
1) Register with the Telephone Preference Service - http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/number_type.html - this should fix nuisance UK calls.
2) Get a phone with both an answerphone and caller ID. Before picking up the phone, if it says "International" or "Out of Area", leave it for the answerphone to pick up and monitor the call. If it is some distant relative with an emergency, you can then pick up. More likely, the caller will hang up without bothering to speak a word.
Any calls that say International, I pick up the phone, then put it down on the table, carry on with whatever I was doing , then put the phone down again a few minutes later. If I didn't answer, the ringing would drive me up the wall, but I can't be bothered talking to them, so I don't.
I just pick phone up, saying 'sprechen sie Deutsch...sprechen sie Deutsch?....(and the equivalent in German of 'something-off' ) and they put the phone down. Just makes me happy, sad old life isn't it lol.
I like to play along sound really interested then when its time for the payment I say " oh just a minute I forgot to ask this is for an Apple computer isn't t it because you said Microsoft, but I presumed as you knew I had a problem with my computer then you would have known this" they don't then seem to be amused and put the phone down on me. No sense of humour haha
I'm not sure the telephone preference service filters out all calls as I get three or four a day - computer/accident etc and I belong to the tps. One (English!) Caller told me you have to register annually, which turned out not to be true. The very next day, I got a call from a very nice lady offering to register for their service at only £1.80 a month - coincidence or what?
Me too. I've been registered with TPS for years but still get them. The latest batch have been about hearing loss as 'their records show I used to work in industry'. I used to work with the deaf so I was really tempted to blind them with science or try the old 'Eh? Can you speak up'. They must have caught me on a good day because I just said 'No, thank you' and put the phone down. And I can't repeat what I'd like to do to the pre-recorded message about government funded boilers.