On 16/05/2019 14:50, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Steve Walker wrote:
On 16/05/2019 10:51, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Steve Walker wrote:
Our GP surgery is fine, but the hospitals all withhold their numbers.
Why not send out the switchboard number, so you can recognise who is
calling or whitelist them on your phone?

Likely outgoing only lines. Which they don't want blocked with people
trying to call.

Yes, I understand that, but just stick the central switchboard number on
the outgoing calls - in all likelihood they are going through it anyway.

But could they do it to a group of outgoing lines? I've no real idea of
how these are organised, but may have lots of individual numbers.

You can guarantee that they have far fewer lines than phones and run
them all through the switchboard. Many places will also have a few lines
that do not go through the switchboard for emergency use if the
switchboard goes down - this can sometimes involve getting a handfull of
emergency phones out of cupboards and plugging them in (I assume that
one pair in the socket connects to the switchboard and another [shared
by multiple sockets] connects to a real phone line).

(Going back to my Swap Shop days on BBC TV where we kept the outgoing
lines - used to put contributors on air - a state secret ;-)

Other than private household and mobile numbers, there should be no
excuse for not giving a valid number out, even if it is just a central
switchboard or head office.

I had a problem a few years ago where a rogue autodialler kept phoning
my mobile and giving silent calls, but the number was withheld and I had
no idea where it was coming from. My phone provider confirmed that it
was a rogue autodialler from a company, but would not give me any
information to identify them without the police being involved, but the
police didn't want to be involved as "we get loads of nuisance call
cases and we can't spare the manpower."

Which is where Truecall works so well.

All everyone kept saying was to change my number - which I couldn't do
as family, friends, HMRC, the MOT centre, banks, insurance companies,
and most of all, agencies that I get contracts through, all had the
existing number. I would never be able to be sure that I had informed
everyone of the change and would almost certainly lost work because of it.

With Truecall, you'd put all those numbers in its memory - via your mobile
phone list or whatever - and they'd not know you had a call blocker.

But I don't want to do that - some callers, of calls that I really do
need to receive, won't leave a message and also withhold their number -
so I HAVE to accept and actually answer calls with withheld numbers just
in case. And I can't guarantee that I'd manage to enter every possible
genuine number either, so some non-withheld numbers would get blocked.
Part of why I wish it was a legal requirement to give at least a central
number, so I could see which are valid ones for myself at the time.

SteveW