Zoe Burgess’s predicament is becoming a common one across the UK. “[The call] must not then lead to a sales pitch,” says Tessa Kelly, director of compliance at the Direct Marketing Agency.Unless you are receiving crank calls, the silence on the other end of your phone line is the result of your number being targeted by companies’ automatic dialling equipment. Once your number has been received, unwanted calls should stop after 28 days. If they don’t, you can complain by going to , the website of the body that polices the use of data.Your telephone may still ring, though, thanks to a couple of loopholes. First, companies can call you as part of market research, though no marketing “message” can be made during the call.Second, expect calls from businesses with which you already have a commercial relationship – your gas supplier, say – but only in relation to customer service.

This is a free facility, paid for by the direct marketing industry, which came into being after the implementation of a European directive, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. Once you express a preference not to be contacted, businesses cannot call you at home with unsolicited offers. They can be fined up to £5,000 if they do.You can sign up to the TPS using the contact details at the end of this article Some 6.2 million private customers have already done so. For example, you may (perhaps) unwittingly have ticked boxes on product application forms in the past allowing sister organisations to call you.

On other forms, you can grant the same permission, by default, if you don’t tick the boxes.To crack down on intrusive calls, you could subscribe to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). And BT may still call you from time to time about faults, maintenance, and service or product information.For a quarterly fee (£29.38), you could choose an ex-directory service where any call to BT enquiries requesting your number is screened by an operator, who then rings you to see if you want to take it. These are produced by BT for those organisations, such as rival 118 services, that regularly need directory information.You could go ex-directory, a free BT service that will take you off most company radars but also put you out of reach of old friends and acquaintances who lose your number.As a safety precaution, your details will be passed to the emergency services if you dial 999. You could also choose to have your details disclosed only via BT’s telephone directory enquiries – not through a phone book or its online services.Any of these arrangements can be made by dialling 150 on your BT landline.However, companies don’t just go to directory enquiries for numbers. It’s not just businesses offering free holidays and the like; I’ve even had the phone ring only for me to pick it up and hear nothing at the other end.
I have had a BT landline for years and don’t particularly want to go ex-directory, but these calls are a real pain.