This blog post is about signing up to the telephone preference service in the UK.
2021 update: I don’t know whether this old 2012 blog post is still relevant and I’m not providing a recommendation.
Introduction
Working from home means I have a few contact numbers at home, and whilst I don’t use my personal telephone number for work, I can hear the personal telephone ring everywhere at home numerous times throughout the day. I never answer it during my working day, but the ringing is driving me insane!
So whilst this in-fact a personal blog post, on a work related blog, the problem does impact working from home, so I thought I would write about the issue here. I would also like to point out, businesses can also sign-up to the ‘Telephone Preference Service’ as well!
Half the time the call is either an automated message, else the ringer just hangs up. I already had adjusted my answer machine message to tell cold callers to not call back, and to remove us from their databases, now I’ve decided to sign-up to the ‘Telephone Preference Service‘.
The online process I went through was this:
- I selected residential, but you can select different business types.
- I typed in the telephone number.
- I typed in my postcode and then selected my address.
- I then selected the reason for registering, which in my case was ‘To stop unwated telephone marketing calls’.
- I selected where I heard about TPS.
- I then typed in my email address and my name, which I wasn’t happy about doing. Apparently you can register without an email address via another method, but I just wanted to get the registration process completed.
- They then quickly sent me an email, which I clicked a link within the email to confirm the registration.
Now according to the website, I should start to notice a decline in calls, but it will take 28 days for the calls to stop, unless they have my consent.
Conclusion
Frankly I don’t have a clue how effective this is, but if it stops even a few calls, then fantastic!