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I get frequent calls to my landline trying to fax me something. I believe my number is 1 digit off a nearby hospital, and people attempting to fax them things accidentally fax me. The calls during the day are easily ignored, but they start in the early morning while I'm trying to sleep. I don't want to just turn the ringer off every night because I may get an important call in the middle of the night, which I would miss.
How can I stop these unwanted faxes?
I've tried all sorts of things to stop unsolicited calls in the past but none of them worked. The bodies like the ICO or TPS in the UK are only interested in logging your complaint and then they will investigate when they get so many thousand reports and someone tells them the name of the organisation. If the calls are from another country, forget it, they aren't interested, even if the call routes to a local company after you press 5 or whatever.
So, about a year ago, I bought a Call Blocker device and I highly recommend it. When a nuisance call comes in, press the big red button on the front and no further calls from that number will cause your phone to emit any sound whatsoever.
I do resent having to buy this device, but 20 years after this kind of marketing/scamming became the norm, the authorities have still failed to even acknowledge that it needs to be addressed. In terms of my mental wellbeing, it has already paid for itself many times over!
I might be off big time, but I'd look into buying a fax machine and connecting it to your landline number during the night.
This way, it will catch any call, and since you say most of those wrong calls are from fax, it will handle it silently.
In case a fax machine answers a non-fax call I'm not sure what will happen, but good chance you can configure it to "skip" the call in such case, switching over to the phone device.
Bottom line: not something I ever did myself and might not work, but worth a try.
A mistaken dialed wrong number is not technically an illegal unsolicited call. It is just purely a mistake which could be exacerbated by the possibility that the number is stored on the fax sending the message.
If however, you were to reverse search the caller by their number and let them know, and it happens again after a reasonable time to rectify, then it does become an unsolicited call which can be reported to the ICO (Information Commissioner Office) if it is a sales call or Ofcom as there is no person on the other end of the call.
The ICO or Ofcom cannot do anything without the caller ID number and time of call anyway.
In the meantime, as suggested before, you can block unwanted calls like this with your phone if your phone has the facility to do so. The caller can call, but the phone won't ring and it will store the call as a missed call for you to report the incident.
I believe that blacklisting by BT and other providers will stop the call from connecting in the first place, but you would need to write the number down and go to them via a website or calling customer services.
it is not difficult as you think just go to the blacklist and add those numbers
Mute your phone! (leave buzzer on and it might be good to keep it in your pocket if you know you might get an important call, but not at night!)
If you have an Android phone, you can set it to "Do Not Disturb" with a few variations to allow calls you really want:
I use the second setting, and have it activate automatically on a schedule around 11PM and off when my alarm goes off. This way I'm not disturbed in the night, but am confident if someone needs to get hold of me they only need to call back a second time.
This might block the large majority of your unwanted middle-of-the-night calls while allowing friends and family to contact you if really needed.
(I just realized you have a landline. So, I'll suggest you first convert the landline to a mobile line, then try this.)
