Dob them in. If they are a local real estate agent then it should be pretty easy to get their number. Getting a fine will soon discourage them to use your letter box.
I get missed calls indicated on my mobile phone; no message and no identity of caller. I find this infuriating because sometimes the number looks familiar and I return the call, thinking it might be someone I tried to contact recently for whatever reason but who is not personally known to me, then it turns out to be someone trying to flog something. Grrrr.
Ilona
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As you seem to be getting calls from real estate agents on a regular basis, it is probably a good idea to re-register on the Do Not Call Register. I have found that this is necessary and removed many of the nuisance calls I was receiving.
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It has been a bit quieter now that I have been telling those who ring that I am on the Do Not Call register.
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@Kathryng76 I think you have to re register every 2 years from memory . Could not confirm that on the ādo not callā web site but I think Iām right about that . Will have a better look at the DNC website .
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A telecoms software engineer in the USA fixed this at his home, he developed a automated computer program designed to keep the callers on the line as long as possibly. Because as he rightly describes the best way to hurt unwanted solicitation callers is to cost them their most precious resource, that is time.
His program is a algorithm on his computer that automatically answers the phone and selects and arranges pre-recordered questions and statements and other sound effects he already has on the computer. The result is the caller is convinced that they are talking to a real person who is semi-interested in their pitch but is so distracted by his barking dog in the background and yelling at is kids who also playing/fighting in the background that he needs to keep asking the caller to repeat his pitch.
Recordings of the engineerās program in action can be heard online and it is hilarious to hear the rising frustration and anger from the unsolicited callers as they go over and over their spiel again and again trying to hook the simulated computer person in.
His program is so realistic that it manages to keeps many of these callers on the line as they clearly believe they are talking to a person, sometimes some upwards of 20 mins or more.
Sometimes the caller loses their bottle and starts abusing the simulated computer person never realising it is a computer program, but as a program it remains totally calm and sometimes the because the algorithm running the program selects related new questions and statements this sometimes manages to have to the caller after cooling off a bit try his pitch yet again and waste even more time.
I just wish he would commercialise the program and allow us all the pleasure of wasting the time of these unsolicited callers, I reckon oneās number would disappear from their dialling lists pretty quick after they called you with one of these programs.
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I think this site http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/ may be the creation of the gentleman you have referred to ? It is a subscription service available in the USA. The home page says āComing soon to Australiaā¦ā
Thatās a first for me- a call from Zurich, Switzerland trying to sign me up for āonline sporting servicesā. The caller knew my name and I said to him that I preferred to do my sporting activities in the real world, rather than online, such as cycling. I asked him a couple of times what exactly he was trying to sell me, at which point he said it was online gambling.
At that point I told him to #@%k off! and hung up.
I guess my name and number must be on some international phone spamming listā¦ not happy.
BTW, the number is:41 435 087355
A few minutes after that call, āprivate numberā called again, but Iām pretty sure its some crowd trying to sell me web design services- they call every day, usually around 6-7pm, but getting earlier in recent days although I donāt answer them any more- they wont take no for an answer.
I receive calls every single day from a 029003---- number (the last digits change slightly) . I googled and discovered the numbers have multiple complaints and belong to a charity. I discovered my phone has a call barring function and entered the number and variants. The phone now rings once when they call and cuts the call off. They still ring every day at least once and I canāt understand how we havenāt been removed from their call list. Talk about persistent!
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Good luck with that! In my experience, they couldnāt care less. Local companies such as solar panel suppliers are utilising so-called marketing companies to generate sales leads for them. Those of course are the Indian call centres, which are proving to be such a nuisance, as they ignore the DNC register. According to the ACMA website, local companies canāt circumvent the regulations in this way. However, in my experience ACMA are worse than useless, which is what prompted me to begin this thread.
I just wish that Choice would take this up as a campaign.
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Iāve often done that. At one time I had a competition with myself to see how long I could get them to stay on the line - my best was one hour from those good folks from Microsoft who warned me that I am to be having a viruses on my computer. 
At the end of the hour I was bored and told them precisely what they could do with it. Strangely enough they never called back.
Next time Iām going to use the āwhat are you wearing?ā or āguess what Iām holding in my handā lines.
One particularly amusing call was from the Tax Office telling me that the police were on their way because I hadnāt paid my taxes. I fooled around with them for a while, and the chap on the other end obviously twigged. He said āListen carefully, Mr **** - you must do exactly as I tell you,ā at which he told me to perform an act which is, at best, anatomically impossible. I was disappointed that heād hung up - he did it really well and gave me a real belly laugh. I would have liked to congratulate him for at least being entertaining.
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Iāve just had another call, the tax office scammers are now using a recorded message to tell you that the police are on their way to prosecute you etc.
The call was from 02 61003293, and the message said I had to call it back straight away, which of course I wont be!
Looks like they have been busy in the past day or so:
http://www.reverseau.com/02-6100-3293.html
EDIT 19/5: theyāve called again with the recorded message, from: 02 6188 5614
Thanks for the heads up
We also have been getting one starting with 08********* (0854214445 and 0854216975) (two new nos from 19/42017 - 0725412387 and 027284129) over the past week (at least twice per day). Looks like they using caller ID spoofing.
Thought I would answer it to make sure it was not a genuine call.
Said were from Telstra (in subcontinent accent), knew my first initial and last name (obviously from the whitepages listing)ā¦I didnāt admit is was me though. I asked what was the problem and said that our phone and internet was going to be cut off for 6 months from "tomorrowā as āTelstraā has noticed unauthorised traffic from our computer.
I then said that they had contacted the local police station and asked them to hold the line so that we could trace the call electronically. They asked me to repeat what I has said and then after about 3 seconds they disconnected.
Thought it would stop them but it didnāt. Added all their numbers to our phone filter to hopefully stop them trying to call.
Work around for nuisance callers. Not perfect, but works. We have a landline and personal mobiles. It appears that most if not all nuisance calls are on the landline. We only have the landline as part of a crazy internet bundle deal with Telstra. All our friends and relatives now use our mobile numbers, so the landline is only of use to the scammers and nuisance callers!
Solution:
- set the number of rings to the minimum on low volume and transfer to voicemail. In our case only two rings.
- voice mail message says āphone is not attended, please call mobile or leave a messageā BUT we do not give our mobile numbers.
Result: low volume and only two rings - and guess what - NO messages even though we get at least one call each evening.
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I never answer calls to my ID display landline which are not in the phone phonebook . Rings set at very low. This has reduced nuisance calls a lot, and usually they do not leave a message. Except recently a message said: There is a warrant out for your arrest, call this number immediately , do not ignoreā¦
The voice was of a mature well spoken male. So childish.
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To solve our problem of receiving too many unwanted calls (scammers, charities, real estate agents, recorded politicians, surveys, wrong numbers) we are in the process of cancelling our landline. Only about 5% of calls are from family and friends etc. We have been on the Do Not Call register for many years which didnāt work for the above categories. So far we donāt get those unwanted calls on our mobiles. Iām looking forward to the peace.
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What is the point of a DO NOT Call List and as Jannette says if scammers, charities, real estate agents, recorded politicians, surveys are able to ring youā¦
These people that you do not want calls from DO NOT PAY for your phone service.
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No idea if anyoneās mentioned this already because at the top of this thread I was warned it would take me 15 minutes to wade through all the replies, so I didnāt.
For those of you who have iPhones, you can block any number and that will put a stop to all incoming calls and text messages from any number you have in the block list. Works like a treat.
As far as the home phone is concerned, we have an answering machine with call screening, so if we donāt recognise the caller we let the answering machine answer and listen to the message being left as itās being left. If itās someone we want to talk to we can then pick up the phone while theyāre still leaving the message and the answering machine stops recording. Nine times out of ten the message is a hung up signal, and we donāt lose any sleep over not speaking to whoever it was that couldnāt be bothered to leave a message.
So we donāt get to speak to too many nuisance callers unless theyāre not on the block list of our mobile phones, in which case, they very quickly end up on the block list. Itās amazing how many scam callers donāt hide their phone numbers.
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For those with Android
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