I've had a recent spate of two distinct kinds of cold calls:

"Just a quick two minute survey" calls from a source which my phone's
display can only identify as "International - Out Of Area. These are real
people, possibly in India, and they ask for me by name. I've tried various
techniques to stop them, including telling the caller that "Mr Coules died
last week" and on one occasion actually going through the entire survey
(which took a deal longer than two minutes) giving false but plausible
answers to every question. The calls still continue.

Automated calls. On answering there's a fractional pause then a recorded
voice.

If there's an answering machine switched on at the time of the call, both
real people and machines just hang up without saying a word.

All this despite my being registered with the TPS.


Bert