We should follow the example of our neighbours in Europe in banning cold calling - Andrew Vine
I can just about set my watch by the nuisance phone calls that have been arriving for the past month. Regular as clockwork, at about 10.30am, 2pm and 5pm, the landline rings. On answering, a man introduces himself as ‘John’ and says, “I’m one of the local energy advisers for your area,” at which point I put the phone down.
This abrupt termination of the call is only my latest tactic. I started off by politely saying I wasn’t interested. Then I asked – politely again – for my number to be taken off ‘John’s’ list of people to call, as I wouldn’t be engaging with his sales pitch under any circumstances.
Since that didn’t work, and I became increasingly irritated by being bothered three times a day, I progressed to being abusive, at which point ‘John’ put the phone down. That seemed to work, because the calls stopped for a few days. Then the whole rigmarole started again.
I caught him off guard on one occasion by demanding to know the name of his company, so I could contact it and request that no more calls be made to my home.
He gave me a plausible-sounding name, but a check with Companies House established that no firm corresponding to it is registered. Nor does it have a website, and the Manchester number the calls supposedly come from is dead when I try calling back. All of which points to the whole thing being a scam.
Assuming it is, the mystifying thing is why ‘John’ and whoever is behind him, keeps on ringing a number after the phone has been slammed down dozens of times. It makes no sense.
Goodness knows how many other people are suffering the same pestering from this outfit, which is presumably angling to extract bank details from the gullible in order to empty their accounts. Sadly, some people will fall for it. Spiralling levels of fraud are the proof of that.
One of the most annoying aspects of these repeated calls is the sense of powerlessness I – and many other people - feel in trying to stop them.
I have BT’s free call-blocking service, which filters out known scam numbers. That hasn’t stopped them. Nor has registering with the Telephone Preference Service, which means legitimate firms cannot call someone who has opted out of unsolicited communications.
I’ve also reported the calls to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which cracks down on scammers, but since the only points of contact I can provide for ‘John’ are a fictitious company name and false telephone number, it’s hard to see what action the ICO can take.
We’re all on the back foot in trying to stop our days being interrupted by unsolicited or scam calls.
As consumers, we can choose not to do business with a firm we don’t rate or had a poor experience with, but we can’t stop strangers reaching out to us in our homes, and that’s just wrong.
And it’s an open goal for fraudsters. With so many people leading increasing amounts of their lives via their phones, whether for socialising, banking, work or shopping, they have become accustomed to engaging with and even trusting complete strangers instead of being suspicious of somebody who rings out of the blue.
Which is why we ought to follow the example of our neighbours in Europe in banning cold calling unless somebody explicitly consents to receiving it.
Germany led the way, introducing a ban in 2009, and the Netherlands and France followed suit last month. In all three countries, surveys have found overwhelming support for the measures, which is hardly surprising, because everybody with a phone gets sick and tired of having their time wasted by people they don’t want to talk to.
Well done to the governments of all three countries for putting the interests of consumers over the protests of marketing companies which have said the bans cost them business.
The other great benefit of the bans is that they make it harder for the scammers to win somebody’s confidence and con them. If we all know a legitimate business cannot be calling, because to do so is illegal, then we can put the phone straight down in the knowledge that a scammer has been denied another victim.
With fraud out of control and those responsible often based abroad and beyond the reach of the police, a ban is surely a valuable safeguard for vulnerable or elderly people who might be taken in by a persuasive con artist pretending to be calling from a bank or building society.
Maybe it’s time for the Prime Minister to consider a European-style ban on unsolicited calls as part of his mission to help consumers. He’s keen to save everybody money, which is something we’d all welcome. Making it harder for fraudsters to steal hard-earned wages and savings would do exactly that.