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On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, kevin wrote: > Can I suggest a New piece of Hardware or Linux Based phone that when a > caller phones and asks to speak to "the Owner Of The Business?" wanting > to Sell them Some cut price Utility. I say "Please Hold whilst I > transfer you......" to a 0870 or some such premium rate number that will > replace the lost revenue time I have spent answering their persistent > calls. I get up to 10 per day at least. I know when they are on the > line now, as you get a 5 sec delay from answering to them saying " Am I > talking to the Owner of the Business?" I give them 4.5 secs and replace > the receiver. You can't dial a number that starts to generate you more money than it costs to call )-: So an 0870 number might return 4p a minute, but it'll cost over 8p a minute to call. I was getting a lot of calls from an 0800 number recently - "The Listening Company" - they are a market research company, and as such not covered by TPS... When you called their 0800 number you just got a message... So I setup my system to recognise the number and then place an outgoing call to the same number and bridge the calls together... After a few days (I was getting 3-4 a day) the switched to withholding their number which was a PITA. (As when wifey calls from work, it's withheld )-: Best thing I've found to unsolicited calls is to answer "Yes" then just put the phone down but not hang up. Hang up 5 minutes late when you remember. That'll waste their time (& money) and make the poor tellytubby drop on his call success rate and eventually make him unemployed. Eventually there will be no-one employed as a sales/cold caller droid and that'll be that. Alternatively, I transfer them to an extension which plays them this: http://unicorn.drogon.net/tt-allbusy.wav then standard music on hold forever. Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html