Blocking spam and scam numbers

[Coldchips]

I have recently installed the NBN gateway kit.  Things seem to work OK but I had hoped to be able to immediately block spam and scam calls of these types -

• Nobody on the line.These happen up to three times a week
• Nobody on the line but a recorded female voice eventually says "Goodbye".  happen anything up to four or five times a week.
• Your computer has a virus, claimed by someone purporting to be from Telstra
• Your computer has a virus, claimed by someone purporting to be from Microsoft
• Solar cells sales
• You are entitled to compensation from some supposed accident
• You are owed money by / you owe money to the Tax Department
• And others I have probably forgotten.

This has been going on for years and before connecting to the NBN I used to take the phone off the hook. Of course the old touch tone phone had no display of any kind. All I could do was record the time and date of the call, report the list to Telstra who told me they they could not block the calls because many came from overseas.  

Everyone in Australia with a landline gets this rubbish.  My late father did, and he died two years ago, it is not a new thing.   

I am on the "Do Not Call Register". I have the T voice 503 handset and have been through the manual without obvious result and through what appear to be the relevant parts of this web site. 

Surely to goodness in this day and age where these home phones have dozens of mostly useless options there should be a method of blocking future calls from these nuisance  numbers immediately.   

Do we have to go through a politician to get something done about it?  

[TimmyT]

Hi @Coldchips,

Thanks for contacting us. I can appreciate your frustration with scam calls. While we can't block phone numbers, I recommend speaking with our Unwelcome calls team on 1800 805 996 who will be best to follow this up with you. As a last resort, an option you may want to consider is changing your phone number which our Unwelcome Calls team can discuss with you as well. Furthermore, if you haven't done so already, I also recommend reporting these calls to Scam Watch www.scamwatch.gov.au. Let me know if you have any questions. 

- Tim 

[ForensicsGuru]

@Coldchips, unfortunately, most of these scum bags are ahead of us "good guys" and there is not much you can do... Unfortunately it is too easy to spoof phone numbers (not Telstra's problem, this is industry wide issue) and again, unfortunately, nothing much you can doo about it...

@TimmyT, I have been mostly proud of Telstra's employees responses here, but yours is out of ordinary - complete crap, suggesting prescribed "spiel" for the call centre monkeys... None of your proposed solutions can help here, and unless you are one of the "trained monkeys" you should know it and should be ashamed of posting your response...

@Coldchips, just ignore them.. Give them some smart responses and they will hang up and hopefully ignore you... Please, do not be rude nor argue with them - both of these could result in unwanted calls in the middle of the night etc... 

[Coldchips]

Timmy T
Did you actually read the question?

I quote from my question "All I could do was record the time and date of the call, report the list to Telstra who told me they they could not block the calls because many came from overseas." i

This is quite useless.since it merely removes a few Australian nuisance callers which were a minority.
Is it to talk to a politician to make Telstra move it's arse?

[Coldchips]

I talk over them about scams then hang up.

[Ozmoz]

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@Coldchips wrote:
I talk over them about scams then hang up.

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Because of them, and nothing you can do about it, I no longer have my home phone plugged in. 

Generally though, its best just to hang up and say nothing.

Further to @TimmyT comments, you can call that number he mentioned and get certain countries barred. So if you don't need to get calls from them it's worth considering. There is 3 top country offenders and I'm having a brain fade atm so I can't recall them, sorry.

[abthomp]

Get yourself a Telstra Call Guardian phone. You'll never get another scam call again. Best thing Telstra ever sold

[Iain_T]

Thanks for suggesting the Telstra Call Guardian abthomp   For more information on the the Telstra Guardian home phone to help block these calls, please check out the link below:

https://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/t5/Announcements/Telstra-Call-Guardian-301-Never-answer-a-nuisan...

[Ozmoz]

Yes thanks @abthomp I'll order one :-)

[Coldchips · Accepted solution]

  Iain R. Why the dickens is this call guardian not routinely available? None of this is satisfactory.  Having to buy a special phione to solve a problem that has existed for several years is not good enough.  

[MammaB]

Hi, I understand what you mean and I shall pass this on accordingly. As my colleague mentioned, you can view details of this from https://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/t5/Announcements/Telstra-Call-Guardian-301-Never-answer-a-nuisan...