I never ever give money over the phone. There are too many scammers around. A while ago a charity call center began targeting my friend’s father. He was beginning to dement. They kept calling (multiple times a day) and getting donations of around $20. They got $850 out of him in one week.
Now I have some charities that mean a lot to me and I go on line when the mood takes me and make donations that way.
I will not do subscription style donations or cold call donations.
I really loathe getting the postal gifts of cards etc. Usually the cards are ghastly anyway and to me, it is a waste of the resources that donors put into the organization.
I also find the habit of some environmental groups selling plush toys of iconic animals as fund raisers. These things are basically all plastic and will wind up as micro plastic in a landfill. That is not a positive step towards conservation.
If you use the internet and have a VOIP phone service there is one effective way of dealing with Telemarketers and Charities harassing you with unwanted calls.
Simply go into the modem VOIP settings and block all calls without caller ID, if you get an unwanted call that has provided the caller ID, add that number to the block list for calls.
When this is done your VOIP service still receives the call, but the modem will not allow the telephone to ring for the unwanted calls.
After doing this I have not had any unwanted calls from telemarketers or charities for many years.
I also strongly believe we should have the legal right to have our personal information and contact details removed from the databases held by charities and telemarketers upon making a legally binding request to never contact us again.
The charities and telemarketers are abusing our right to privacy, because the majority of people do not ask for these telemarketing calls and once they get your personal information they divulge your personal details to other organisations at will.
This behaviour constantly continues unchecked and we are having our personal privacy betrayed daily. The privacy laws in Australia are simply not strong enough when this type of conduct is permitted.
That works as described but some companies and government agencies [still] show only ‘Private Number’ for their outbound calls and sometimes they are important calls. Depending on one’s kit and exactly how it is set up it could reject the call outright (could be problematic missing it) or send it to voicemail (trying to return it since they usually only provide their main contact number could put you on hold for quite a while since about 100% of call centres are ‘busier than normal we apologise…’ these days).
Good to have eye wide open when doing that.
That will let through about 95% of scammers and cut out some legitimate callers such as John Hunter hospital and a few of my more paranoid friends.
That has not been my experience, 99% of scammers and telemarketers don’t send their caller ID because they do not want to have their calls quickly blocked.
This is why blocking anonymous calls with no caller ID has been an extremely effective way of dealing with telemarketers and scammers.
For many, many years I have only experienced 1 or 2 scammers or unwanted telemarketers who were dumb enough not to block their caller ID, as soon as I recognize that it is a scam caller or telemarketer the call is rapidly disconnected and their number goes straight onto my block list.
As for calls from government departments and organizations whom stubbornly persist in NOT sending their caller ID on calls they have several options, sms/text message me on my mobile phone or use the email address I have provided them with.
There is the final option of using Australia Post mail for non-urgent messages which don’t require an immediate response.
If you have safety conscious or paranoid friends and relatives whom do not send their caller ID. Please explain to your trusted friends and family that it is possible to dial a numerical code that will allow sending the caller ID for that call ONLY.
This numerical code can be added on as a prefix to the trusted friends and relatives numbers stored in their telephones phone book and will ONLY send the caller ID for those calls.
I donate to my preferred charities via Paypal which I do on the PayPay website. The organisation then has no record of me / DOB / address / name / credit card so cannot contact me, and I have a legitimate receipt that I can use for tax.
Reading through the blurb on the PayPal fundraising pages, they will forward the funds to the registered charity typically 15-45 days after donation.
And any phone calls with no caller ID who do not leave a voice message (or SMS) (as I request on my voice message) then get blocked.
