"Roger Hayter" wrote in message
...
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.

(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.

Luckily the problem resolved itself after five or six weeks. It would
have been so much easier if "a" number had been attached to the calls,
allowing me to track down the company involved and tell them to stop.

SteveW

In my limited experience as a user, all large PABXs sold this century
could present the extension number or any other chosen number, by
a simple series of pre-dialling codes, or as a policy unless cancelled.

But plenty would still be using PABXs sold last century.

Informing users how to do this and convincing departments
that they should was were it fell down, in the NHS at least.