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In the UK I'm signed up with the Telephone Preference Service.

I only ever get one type of unsolicited phone call from a robot voice asking if I've recently had an accident, then transferring me to a human to get details.

I tried asking them to put my on their do not call list (very calmly and politely) and they keep calling. So now I waste as much of their time as possible everytime they call, and then block their number. (And then report them to ICO).

In short, I try to soak a call for as long as possible.

Me, too. In the last few months, the calls ramped up to a frantic pace on my cell #. The difference, though, is the caller ID was very close to my number, sometimes most digits were the same. All the calls were from the same company, I'd bet. Free trips to Mexico were the #1 subject. There were others. I started keeping them on the line for 10-15 minutes each. At the end, I'd say "I'm not going to give you my CC# because I kept you on the like since you refused to put me on your DNC list."

I've given up doing that, since having done it 10 or so times, I'm tired of it. They won, but not before I wasted a lot of their time, too.

These boiler rooms are really a scourge on our society. I know they scam lots and lots of people. On one call, I heard clapping every few seconds and when I asked what that was, they dude said someone had just "purchased" the free vacation (see, you need to give them $99 to secure that).

> These boiler rooms are really a scourge on our society. I know they scam lots and lots of people.

I dead-seriously believe that telemarketing is a much less honourable occupation than prostitution. At least in the case of latter, you have two willing parties who need something from each other and voluntarily engage in exchange of value. Telemarketing lives of lying, deception and ruining people's lives in borderline-legal ways.

Usually I pretend to be interested while getting as much information about the caller as possible, and then I inform them that I intend to file with the FCC or describe in gory fantastical detail how I plan to murder them, depending on how annoyed I'm feeling that day.

A website where you could pledge to do this and list your phone number might be a great idea. This would be the equivalent to a honeypot server. If enough people got on board then the business model of spam calling would collapse.

Straight asking to be put on the do not call list has the same result (for the callers that maintain one).

Just talk over their opening spiel. 15 seconds, no more calls from that caller.

For me, they've usually hung up before I finish saying "do not call list"... shows how much they care about following the law.

Sure, it won't always help with scams. But they will still probably remove you from their dialer, the operators cost them money too, so they don't want to keep calling bad leads.

You would think. Not according to my experience:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11793483

I continue to get calls. Still. Sometimes several times a day. This means two things to me. First, their dialer software sucks. Second, they do need to put people on a DNC list. It would improve their odds of scamming people.

Most of the calls I get are people doing surveys, or lying about how I was in an accident and could make money from a legal claim. Neither pay any attention to the UK TPS (no call list); the former because that type of call isn't covered, and the latter because criminals don't tend to obey the law.

I get a lot of calls from Indians. Any solution has to take into account the international nature of the annoyance. I'm perfectly happy with a whitelist system, or where anyone who has not called me before needs to sign up with my phone company using verifiable credentials.

Honestly, soak the calls for as long as possible. Always press the button to get connected to someone. Don't answer any of the questions in the survey. Just generally try to waste as much time on the callers end. The "surveys" are not real surveys, but rather a way to try to get to opt in to a sales calls.

I love trying get to the PPI callers to explain to me what bank accounts, insurance, credit cards are, finally saying that I might have had a bank account, or credit card, then try to get them to explain to me what the PPI is. I had a guy on the phone for about 40 minutes one day while I was waiting for the ferry.

The best thing you can do is get connected to a human as quickly as possible, so you can soak the call.

The other day I didn't really have time to take one of these calls, but I pressed 3 to be connected to someone, and left the phone. After about 5 minutes of being on hold, leaving the phone off the hook, I then heard someone going hello for about 2 minutes.

Another tactic I have is to claim some interest, but that I have to call them back as I am changing phone numbers/jobs/houses, or that I don't have time in the next few weeks, but when I find a moment I will call them back. I refuse to give a 'good time to call' because I am so busy, but when I have a moment I will return the call. This is an amusing tactic because most of the they claim they can only make outgoing calls, and that I will have to give them a time. I generally suggest that them must have an incoming phone number for other purposes, so surely they could give me that number. Usually they decline, so then finally I try to get the persons phone number on the other end of the call. They generally say that is their private number number, to which I say that this my private number, so it really would be quite fair for me to contact them on their 'personal' number.

This seriously works, as I only get one call every month or two. I have also gotten a bit of a reputation at work for these types of calls and my co-workers have not end of amusement that I engage with these callers in this way.

Thank you for your service, but that is a massive waste of your time. Use Lenny.

Lenny? I just do some mundane task while I am soaking their time.

These calls are using an anti-pattern of most people who are disinterested will hang up, but those who are interested will continue to talk to the person.

Their economic model depends on uninterested parties hanging up as quickly as possible. To disrupt their economics, take their call.

I know things are a bit different in the US and Canadia where the mobile/cell call receiver also pays for minutes. Here in the UK, and the rest of Europe, only the call initiator pays for the call. If you are calling from a land you will pay a higher rate to call a mobile (an 07 number).

Lenny: http://www.soundboard.com/sb/itslenny

> Their economic model depends on uninterested parties hanging up as quickly as possible. To disrupt their economics, take their call.

You're right, though in all fairness, your solution doesn't scale fast enough. Most people won't altruistically do something like you did. We could use something that would be easy to set up and that would start generating significant costs for the callers without bothering callees much.

RE Lenny, how is one even supposed to use that? :o.

Lenny was a voice activated script that would cycle through those (plus others I believe) pre-recorded sounds in a (generally successful) attempt to fool telemarketers.

You could transfer calls to a SIP extension (or via a number of PSTN numbers in different locations). Unfortunately the original service is now defunct, but I'm sure there are some private closes in operation.

There's an archive of recordings on youtube linked from https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ -- some are hilarious and sure to brighten anyones day.

in the US and Canadia where the mobile/cell call receiver also pays for minutes

That has changed in recent years. My postpaid cell plan (Verizon) now offers "unlimited talk" and "unlimited text". The only variable is how many GB of data a month you want to pay for. AT&T is similar. Just choose the amount of data.