Bombarded with anon callers

[#1]

Quote from: Ben

Quote from: moob Plusnet staff notable by their absence in this thread. Ah well. Sorry, typically the members of staff who check forums don't work weekends. I'm going to push this question to James to see if we can find out if BTR have a policy of selling details of customers who leave their service. This one might take a while to answer so please bear with us. Edit: I checked with Marketing; they've suggested that it might be the affiliate / cashback / comparison site that customers have gone through. To the people in this thread who are experiencing this problem - did you go through such a site?

I did use Topcashback, but as someone else has already said, I've used them for years and never had this issue until moving to PN.
Can I directly ask again, does Plusnet distribute/sell customer phone numbers to 3rd parties or not? Or could it be BT?

[#2]

I think I've already said in this thread, we don't sell on customer data.

[#3]

Quote from: James

I can assure you that we are most certainly not "selling" your number.

Quote from: Ben

...we don't sell anyone's personal details and to my knowledge, never have and never will.

[#4]

I'm starting to get suspicious of those who, on behalf of the ICO, carry out the handling of reports of being harassed by these numbers of themselves selling your number on. Ever since I started to report each call received to the Information Commissioner's Office, during which you have to provide your number, the calls I get have increased. That is, if I don't report the number who called me, I tend not to get any more calls from them. When I do report the number, they call back repeatedly. Honestly I don't think our phone numbers are safe with anyone, any more. They just get whored out in list upon list, it seems; even when it's a 'new' line and from day one of connection.

[#5]

Quote from: Ben

Quote from: James I can assure you that we are most certainly not "selling" your number. Quote from: Ben ...we don't sell anyone's personal details and to my knowledge, never have and never will.

Thanks (both of you) for telling me again, and quoting in a patronising manner, that PN don't sell my number on. However, reading my question with reasonable care, shows that you haven't answered it fully.

[#6]

Quote from: moob

Can I directly ask again, does Plusnet distribute/sell customer phone numbers to 3rd parties or not? Or could it be BT?

Reading the questions carefully, I would suggest that the first of these (shewn above) has been answered more than once and the second you can answer with as much authority or relevance any Plusnet employee.

[#7]

Sorry moob, I didn't intend to be patronizing, I just wanted to get a quick response out before I finished for the day. PeeGee - thanks for covering that, we indeed cannot comment for BT. James isn't in a position to be able to investigate this one any further either.

[#8]

Quote from: PeeGee

Quote from: moob Can I directly ask again, does Plusnet distribute/sell customer phone numbers to 3rd parties or not? Or could it be BT? Reading the questions carefully, I would suggest that the first of these (shewn above) has been answered more than once and the second you can answer with as much authority or relevance any Plusnet employee.

So you're saying that PN, despite being owned by BT aren't privy to any of their policies? Strange.
I was asking the lads here, as I'd consider they had more knowledge on how telephony companies deal with phone numbers, given their line of business.
It just seems strange that I get a lot of calls immediately after joining PN - and that I'm not alone in that regard, yet no explanation is available for this.

[#9]

We are owned by BT but are operated completely independently. We have no access to their policies I'm afraid.

[#10]

Hi Moob,
Really just to echo what Ben has already said, because we are independently run, we have our own policies and procedures in place, although from time we will check things out with BTs Regulatory team.
We would have no reason to be aware of all of Retail's policies unless we were double checking the validity of one of our own policies with them.

[#11]

How ironic - just had my first proper cold call.
"Hello Mr. xxxx (he knew my name),
We've been passed your details from a third party insurance company
Just calling you from some made up accident claims line to see if we can get you some compensation for your recent bump."
Having told him he was talking bullpoo as I hadn't had so much as a scrape for 12 years (it's actually a lot longer than that) and then informed him I was registered with the TPS so he wasn't meant to be calling me anyway, I asked him if he could provide me the details of the "third party insurance company" who provided them with my details. He said he could then waited 20 seconds and hung up on me.
The number on the caller-id came up as "secret" as they had witheld their number. I would just ignore "secret" calls but with a kiddie with a disability who goes to a school who withold their number I can't take the risk.
Ahh well - at least I was mildy abusive to them.

[#12]

I have just had my first "cold-call" in years.
Will monitor the situation as it may have been a one-off.

[#13]

I received a cold call last night and told him in no uncertain terms to go away.  I then received 3 further calls within 5 minutes.  I assume it was the same individual getting his own back

[#14]

Another trick to try is to press and hold  number key for a couple of seconds then let the caller know that you've activated a line trace organised by your phone company to identify cold callers who ignore the TPS directives.
Watch how quickly they clear the line

[#15]

Only problem with that is most of my calls are 'international' so they're not concerned about TPS.