We’re ex-directory and on the TPS lists, but lately we’ve been receiving a fair few random sales and “you have won a Caribbean holiday!” type calls from “international, number unavailable” sources. I used to just hang up, but of late I’ve been leaving the line open, especially if it’s a machine doing the calling. Anything that uses up the caller’s time or causes them to pay more in call charges is fine as far as I’m concerned. I know some people string what we shall loosely term “human” callers along, but to be honest I probably have other things I should be doing. I’m open to suggestions for alternatives — perhaps plugging the phone lines into Asterisk and getting them to talk to another machine for a while for instance.
We have three phone lines here, all ex-directory and on TPS, but only one receives these calls. The number on that line had clearly been re-used as for years after we moved in we received calls from Sky wanting to talk to a “Mr. Gardiner” about his contract or something. Perhaps there’s a connection between those and the calls we’ve now started receiving?