UKC

Hi all. 
Using iPhone 7. 
I've never had serious issues with spam/nuisance calls and perhaps the current will "go away" in due course like others have done (I've never answered this one, I Googled it and it seems to be scammers pretending to be Octopus Energy - who are incidentally my suppliers both at work and at home - it's 01527 962354)

Just started a couple of weeks ago and I blocked the number, and somehow for the first time ever, I noticed that a blocked number can still leave a voicemail! And this is personally more annoying than just seeing the spam call because on the iPhone, you only get a notification that you have new voicemail, and not which number it came from (especially a blocked number as it doesn't show on missed calls), so you have to go through the "listen to your voicemail" options and recognise the automated recording from the scammers (here, a woman's voice instructing me to call a number to discuss "my account"). I've unblocked the number now as personally I prefer to see the incoming call so I can dump it or "ignore" it ("ignore" in inverted commas there because I know it's grammatically paradoxical, but hopefully you can let that slide!)

But they are now calling twice a day. 

Is there a way to block a number, on iPhone, AND block it from voicemail? I did Google it briefly but I got lost in a sea of waffling results! I might have just been having a day of poor Google-Fu. 

Thanks

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Maybe it actually is your energy supplier and their call centre staff are working from home, and it is their home number you are seeing because they forgot to access via some number blocking system.

Perhaps call Octopus and ask them to set your mind at ease.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

As an aside, what is it that makes them mostly "fade away"? Does anyone here actually know how it works in that industry? My logical guess is that there is an automated record of all numbers dialled and once you hit a threshold of "no answer" they drop your number. That is only a guess though; and it is another reason that I don't like the calls going to voicemail because the automated system might register that as "call answered", which presumably makes my phone number more exciting for them.

In reply to Phil Lyon:

It's definitely not Octopus Energy. They don't telephone customers as a first step in any enquiry. They email us. Both my accounts are in order and don't need discussion. My mind is at ease regarding this not actually being Octopus Energy. If it were, they would leave a meaningful message. It's a phishing scam, according to various results from an online search. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

As far as I am aware you cant easily block from voicemail. What does the phone company offer since probably the best bet?

In reply to mondite:

Surely the voicemail is a service offered by your network provider? I assume access to that would have to be blocked by them.

I always assumed the phone number blocking in the iphone was done somehow within the phone itself?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Can you report the number to your network provider? Most have a way of reporting spam numbers and I think they can then sort of blacklist the number from the whole network. No idea how quickly or efficiently they do this though, or if a number needs to rack up a decent number of complaints before they look at it.

I guess another option might be to answer one of the calls and make it abundantly (and not too politely) clear that you know it is a scam and say that you are reporting the number to the police and your network provider in the hope that they log you as a dead end and stop calling. 

In reply to thread:

Thanks all. Yes, it makes sense that the PHONE, and the VOICEMAIL, are separate things. It's not something I've needed to put much thought into before now. 

I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if it dies off quietly and if not, I'll explore one or more of the options suggested here. 

Cheers!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

It still goes to voicemail because the iphone sees the calling CLI and rejects the call in a similar fashion to you using the cleardown button to reject a call which then goes to voicemail.

You need to ensure it's not OE making the calls by answering them and report them to your network provider, who will need to know the calling number and time of call. They should then be able to trace them back through the networks and get it blocked. Or they could be a rubbish network that doesn't care about their customers and fob you off, but as it's a mobile you can always threaten to port to another operator.

In reply to Toerag:

It is a company-provided mobile (which I am permitted to use for all personal stuff too, so it's my only phone) and I have a distant recollection of not actually having much control over the account. But yes, as mentioned above (wrt someone else suggesting contacting my provider) I will give it a go if the calls don't die off. 

Am I being unnecessarily reluctant to actually answer these calls and speak to someone? I have tended to avoid answering known scam/phishing/spoof calls but am I gaining nothing by not answering? I had this vague concept that if they know there is a real live person at my end of the phone, they will persist more (but maybe the existence of my voicemail message means that ship has already sailed!) 

In reply to Jim Lancs:

Yeah the general approach is they just auto reject the call hence it goes to voicemail. In theory it could be done by the phone auto answering and immediately hanging up but think there would be various technical issues with that.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I would doubt it makes a difference since, as you say, its been confirmed as a valid number to try by getting through to voicemail. You could just answer and then put it to one side and see how long it takes them to get bored.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

It might be easier to save the number unblocked, and when they call, answer and immediately hang up on them.  Then they can’t leave messages. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Ive not thoroughly read all the comments so this may have been suggested in the past but recently I know of a few households who have enabled this setting which means to call the phone, they must first say their name and wait for it to be accepted. It means that spam calls generally just give up straight away as they dont want to waste their time with that, and if you recieve the call and dont want it then you just hang up (I cant remember if it automatically blocks it). 

If the call is accepted after you hear the person say their name then they will be automatically added to a whitelist and they dont need to say their name ever again as long as they have the same number.

Might be something to look into!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

That’s interesting, I block unwanted scammer calls on an iphone and have never had any voicemail ever from one of the blocked numbers over probably some 10 years. It’s been 100% successful though I do get the same scammers just using another number to get me to answer sometimes. I once had a scamming call centre call me 7 times over four hours by changing the numbers, but I’m guessing that they were deliberately just trying to annoy my day since I told them where to go after the second call!

Also, I block unwanted numbers on my landline (done at my end) and again there has never been a voicemail message left from a blocked number and there is a network voicemail switched on even if my phone doesn’t physically ring. 

There has to be some differences somewhere in the set ups unless it’s just that the spammers never want to leave me a message on voicemail?!

A btw I’ve had four attempts to my landline in two hours this morning from block numbers - I only know as phone does record attempts even though it does not ring. No voicemail for any of them.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

There are free apps (for android at least, i'd imagine similar exist but less likely to be free on iphones) that answer and hang up on blacklisted numbers without ringing, exactly for this reason.

Also:
https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/nuisance-calls-and-messages/spam-texts-...
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/complaints/complain-about-phones-or-internet-servi...

In reply to Climbing Pieman:

Cheers. It may have been lost in general “noise” on the thread but I too have found this one interesting for the same reasons as you, ie the voicemail aspect of it has not been used before. 

Regarding all the suggestions to answer it and give them hell, having posted about my reticence to answer the calls, I now (at half past midnight and under the influence of classy Tuesday night Aldi wine) think I will do this . Despite my tremulous and timid posting style on here, I am actually quite good at giving hell to scam callers, I just don’t bother to do it much 

In reply to Climbing Pieman:

Do you have 'divert on busy' to voicemail set on your phone or just 'divert on no reply'? If divert on busy isn't set it won't go to voicemail, as the rejection sends a busy message back to the exchange.

In reply to Blue Straggler: If you really think it's a scam number report it.

In reply to Toerag:

No, it’s off. Thanks for info.

Looks like I’ve been lucky that voicemail has not been left for blocked numbers. Long may that continue.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

My top tip: record your answerphone/voicemail greeting in another language. When the robo-callers get through to your voicemail and can't understand your recorded message, they strike you from their list and never ring again.

Mind you, your friends might do the same.

In reply to bruxist:

Would Glaswegian work?

More seriously, what is voicemail even for these days? I turned mine off years ago - if someone wants to leave a message or ask me to call them back, they'll just send me a text or an email. I don't leave voicemail messages, either.

In reply to skog:

I am with you on this although your "these days" has finally put it all into context for me and makes my "attitude" toward voicemail make even more sense, and vindicates me. But I think that's a very personal/subjective thing, and as my mobile is a company-provided work phone, I HAVE to have it (with a "professional and clear" voicemail recorded message). 

Barely anyone leaves me voicemail, it is fair to say. 

Perhaps its purpose "these days" is to make people think that by leaving a voicemail, their requirement gets higher priority than a text or email. After all, if they were ringing (as opposed to sending a text or email in the first place), maybe they did have some "urgent" need. 

Most of my customers have somewhat learned, over the years, that any technical enquiries have to go via email. They have learned this because I've told them It's so there is a written record of the enquiry and the technical issue (if they are ringing, 90% of the time it's because something isn't working or they don't understand a bit of the software or hardware). I want a written record of these. 
I do get the occasional enquiry from a new "customer" via phone, I have no idea why. For about a month late last year, some chap from a university left two voicemail messages per week asking me to call back. I was super busy that month and simply didn't have time for a vague 30 minute conversation on something that could probably be dealt with in two very short emails. Eventually I texted him and told him to send me an email, he thanked me and said he would....and still hasn't sent. I have a feeling that that is a customer that my company was not going to make any money from (my bet is that it was a postdoc trying to blag some free CT scans on our top-end system under the guise of "potential research collaboration"). 

But yeah. Voicemail. It is arcane. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

For all those who still think I should have called my energy supplier to properly confirm it is not them....I have done this today. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Update on this. Last Wednesday or Thursday (still receiving two calls per day, at least they were in office hours) I took to answering the call and saying nothing (actually I didn't even listen to see if there was a "live" human at the other end - just hit the "answer" button on my phone and carried on with whatever I was doing; in a couple of cases if I had music playing through a speaker, I put the phone next to the speaker). 

Since end of business on Friday, I haven't had a call. Possibly unrelated to my answer-and-ignore. Maybe it's because it's a new month and their records show "no engagement" for all of January so I just got crossed off. Let's see how the rest of the week pans out. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Wouldn't you want them to be able to leave a message?

What if you'd accidentally blocked someone important, how would you ever know?

Surely, listening to the message will let you know how genuine they are, scammers rarely leave a message to call back.

In reply to Cobra_Head:

Which bits of the OP didn't you read or understand? 

Was it this bit?

 I Googled it and it seems to be scammers pretending to be Octopus Energy - who are incidentally my suppliers both at work and at home

or perhaps this?

...recognise the automated recording from the scammers (here, a woman's voice instructing me to call a number to discuss "my account")

Since when did scammers rarely leave a message to call back? A well known scam is to demand a call back, to an innocuous looking number that instantly racks up a huge phone bill, although admittedly this is not thought to be the case here (standard phishing)

 

In reply to Cobra_Head:

PS, also thanks for trying to be helpful 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

No worries.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Have the offender shot.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

No calls all week. 

Two hypotheses, neither of which stands up to rigorous scientific scrutiny but the best we have:

Answering and not speaking, a few times, got me crossed off the list.

Not engaging at all throughout January, got me crossed off the list when the month ended. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Still no follow up calls!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Off on a tangent, not related to the OP as such, but doesn't warrant its own thread. 

I just got a stupid spam/scam call, I answered it as the number displayed (spoofed, I assume) was similar to my own and I thought maybe it was someone from my work (we all have company phones and perhaps our provider issues sequenced numbers, I dunno). Anyway. It was a recording, saying that "illegal activity using my National Insurance number, has been detected" and blah blah blah. 

I would let this pass without comment but for two things:

1) the aforementioned "spoofing a mobile number similar to my own" (worked - tricked me into answering the phone)

2) within the last 48 hours I have Googled - not using my phone - regarding replacing the plastic national insurance card, as mine has been missing for years. Not a problem as I have my NI number memorised (and it turns out they don't issue the plastic cards at all, any more). But what a coincidence! 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Ha! Spoke too soon! Two calls today. Missed one (and no voicemail was left), just answered another and didn't speak (but had a quick listen, and there was a live human on the other end of the line. 

The odd thing is that after about two weeks of "peace", this has started up again approximately 50 minutes after I looked online at my real Octopus Energy account....

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The "they are leaving me alone because a new month has come around" theory is definitely dead now. Either one or two calls on each working day (at least within normal working hours). I've been answering them and then just putting the phone next to a speaker playing music or radio. This doesn't seem to deter them. 
 I've now reported the number to Vodafone, all done in a couple of short text messages. Not sure what outcome there will be.