High pressure sales techniques and an increased volume of nuisance, unsolicited calls brought about a free national opt-out system called the Telephone Preference Service, or TPS for short.  Add your details to their list and theoretically you won't receive anymore unsolicited marketing calls.  All businesses, charities included, are not allowed to make unsolicitored sales or marketing calls to numbers on the TPS list unless permission has been given.

Telemarketing companies acquire a calling list and check it against the TPS list to remove any matches prior to using it, then check again every 28 days. If you receive a lot of unwanted sales and marketing calls from various companies, you can add your details to the TPS list. In about a month you should really notice a reduction in calls. This method won't stop your bank from calling and probably none of your service providers, since you are their customer already, but these organisations should honour any request to stop marketing via telephone if you ask them directly.

Buying a calling list from a trusted source that contains relevant, up to date prospects costs money.  Checking the list against TPS costs money too, so there exists unscrupulous "get rich quick" companies that don't care where their lists come from and have no intention of ever checking them against the TPS list.  Similarly, there are organisations or individuals who obtain lists of telephone numbers illegally or deceptively to sell on, multiple times over, to those same telemarketing companies that ignore TPS guidelines.  If your name and telephone number ever find their way onto one of these black market lists, there appears to be no solution to stop a rogue, pop up telemarketing company from buying that list and calling you.  It happened to me and I found out how...

A number of years ago I was involved in a minor car accident and a hire car was provided courtesy of the 3rd party's insurance company.  I collected the car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car and had to provide my contact details, before signing for the car.  A few weeks later I received my first ever unsolicited call on my mobile.  Although, I didn't know it at the time, because the caller sounded genuine and well informed.

"Hi, I'm calling from the National Accident Bureau regarding your recent accident. I wanted to make sure everything has been sorted for you.  How was the hire car from Enterprise?  Did they treat you right?"

The caller continued by asking if I was aware of a national fund and that I was entitled to £4000, saying all insurance companies are given this amount, for anyone involved in an accident, and that often some insurance companies fail to pass the money on.

He knew I had only recently been involved in an accident and he knew I'd received a hire care from Enterprise.  He knew my case, so it sounded legitimate.  He wanted to help me get my money.  Maybe there is a national database, but why haven't I heard of it?  I needed a moment to process what I had just been told, so I told the caller it was an inconvenient time and I asked if he could call back the next day.

The next day came and I received another call.  It started similar, asking if I'd recently been involved in an accident, but the caller, a woman this time, cut straight to the chase and told me they could get compensation for me even if I had no injuries.  It dawned on me this was not the same company calling from the previous day and there was no pot of money.

My TPS opt-out status was being ignored and I continued to receive cold calls from numerous dodgy companies.  Not one caller ever revealed the real name of the company they were calling from, instead giving a generic term such as 'Accident Insurance Group'.  Some callers even argued, saying their lists were obtained legitimately and refused to accept the TPS is a required process. That's just bollocks, right?  Of course they knew, that's why they don't ever reveal their true identity.  They had all knowingly purchased a very up to date, illegal list of relevant telephone numbers, which included my number too and they all chose not to check it against the TPS database.

After researching online a few years back, I found an employee of Enterprise-Rent-A-Car's Southport branch had been pleaded guilty to stealing customer lists from the company's database to sell for profit.  At the time of writing this artlicle however, I came across another mention of the same company, this time 3 employees were at it.. Click here to see the article dated 5th January 2017 which reveals they made hundreds of thousands of pounds, that could be half a million pounds, selling on people's contact information illegally!  

Now, a number of years since the accident, I still receive at least one call a month from a rogue cold-caller. The calls are always regarding the car accident and as a result I now stop answering unknown numbers.  I look the numbers up online and usually find other people confirming it's a call from an accident claims company.  I've tried complaining to the TPS and to the ICO numerous times, but lack of feedback makes you wonder if they have any power at all at stopping this.  In fact, one of the criteria for complaining to the TPS is you need to know the name of the company calling you, and if you tell them what you were told during the call, they come back and say such a company does not exist so they can do nothing to help.  WTF?  Yes, WTF indeed.