2010-01-28

Bounty offered - who are "Callvalue"?

Automated marketing calls to a TPS number.
Ask who they are and it is "callvalue working in conjunction with BT"
They will say no more.
Ask more and they hang up.

I am fucking sick of it.

If I find who they are they are getting sued and reported to the police.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg!

If you work for call value - you are working for a criminal. You may be a criminal yourself even. QUIT NOW.

OK,OK, details for people that do not know.

They are calling with an automation asking if I want unlimited calls or some such. You press 2 to talk to someone and they are trying to sell a call package. They won't say who they actually are. They keep calling all sorts of numbers.

1. Illegal to call with a recording message without my prior agreement
2. Illegal to make a marketing call to a Telephone Preference Service listed number
3. Illegal not to identify the company

They are also using the BT brand, and I have reported that to BT already with call recording.

BOUNTY: If anyone else with a normal BT land-line gets a call, can you sign up and get details. You *can* cancel under distance selling directive and if you are out of pocket as a result I'll personally reimburse as long as you get me actual details of who they are, as I'll be suing them for my costs (well, first person that gets me details). I'll also sort a bottle of whatever you fancy to drink as a reward...

5 comments:

  1. Oooh. You don't want to be making rash promises like that - some of us have expensive tastes in drink!

    ReplyDelete
  2. we had complained about them last year, and got this reply:

    http://www.ico.gov.uk/




    30th September 2009

    Case Reference Number ELE0271210

    Dear Sir/Madam

    Thank you for your correspondence regarding automated direct marketing phone calls you have received from Call Value.

    Your complaint falls under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (the Regulations).

    Regulation 19 states that marketing material cannot be transmitted by an automated calling system (that is where the recipient of the call does not get to speak to a live operator) without the prior consent of the subscriber.

    It is the Commissioner‚s policy to only take formal action where it seems to him to be the only way of ensuring compliance with the Regulations and in the great majority of cases he manages to achieve a satisfactory result without using his formal powers.

    However, our office has received a number of complaints about Call Value and as such the matter has been passed to our Regulatory Action Division (RAD), for their consideration. Details of the Commissioners strategy for regulatory action, which includes the Regulations, can be found under the data protection link on our website.

    Details of any action taken against organisations under the Regulations are also displayed in the Å’Enforcement‚ section of our website.

    As such I have now added your complaints to those already being considered by RAD.

    Depending on the course of action we decide to take, we may or may not need to contact you again. However, should you need to contact us regarding this matter please quote the above reference.

    Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

    Yours sincerely



    x x
    Case Officer

    ReplyDelete
  3. I haven't had that particular one, but I've had similar calls: one telling me I've won a holiday, and something else that I forget right now.

    Often these calls have funny caller-IDs. I think one had 000 and there were various other funny things too. This makes me wonder if the calls come from compromised PABXs. If these people installed a normal phone system, it would be set up properly and would presumably show a withheld number.

    Is this the phone equivalent of spam? You get your PC broken into, and it starts sending emails about Viagra and who knows what else. You get your PABX broken into, and it's used for generating these annoying calls at your expense.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Other people feel the same way...

    http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=588233

    ReplyDelete
  5. Deafie rant. I can't even hear the bastard spammers who phone my phonelines.

    In our previous house we got 8-10 calls a day from 6am to 11pm from spamming shits from indian callcentres. Even screaming "I AM DEAF, I CANNOT HEAR YOU. THIS CALL IS NOT SOLICITED AND IS IN BREACH OF THE DDA AND ELECTRONIC PRIVACY REGULATIONS. REMOVE MY NUMBER FROM YOUR CALL LIST. GO AWAY." every time they called didn't work...

    I had to get a hearing person to answer a few of them, all the same place but impenetrable Indian callcentre people's accents made the organisation name unfindable.

    Our Favourite Telco were no use, they won't enable "auto route through Text Relay" their only response was pretty much to offer to charge me £12 a month to block international calls, £12 a month to block WITHHELD numbers which would block things like hospitals or DWP calling me if I accepted incoming calls or to change my phone number. I tried invoking the DDA at one point but that didn't work either. Given my line rental was £12ish a month and calls were less than £3 a month I wasn't paying £24 a month to block calls I never wanted and should never have been receiving - greedy, lazy, useless bastards.

    They also refused to accept that I was stuck either accepting all calls including spam which meant I was sat at textphone for up to 5 minutes per time having to determine if it was a genuine caller and unable to find out who they were to request removal.

    I wrote to the ICO and OfCom as well explaining my predicament as a deaf spam call recipient and I was disappointed by their attitude which was basically: "While we feel sorry for you, we can't change anything or force favourite telco to trace calls and block them without charge" "if you give us the name of the contacting spammer we'll do nothing as usual".

    I now don't take calls which aren't from known good numbers and use Asterisk to do so. If I didn't have kimble I would not have the technical ability to maintain Asterisk and would be living in a house with no devices on the phoneline and unable to receive calls from my mum all cos there is insufficient sanction and deterrent for spammers using telecommunications networks.

    I wish you luck in hunting these shits down and getting some kind of response.

    ReplyDelete

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