Nuisance calls are one of the key reasons we still get frustrated with our phones, but now BT has a new scheme to ensure you never pick up to a robot on the end of the line again.
It aims to stop nuisance calls about PPI claims and personal accident insurance getting through to your phone.
Through the new BT Call Protect service, the network thinks it will be diverting 30 million nuisance calls a year. That's a lot, and research commissioned by BT said the average UK resident gets four nuisance calls a week.
If you're fed up with it and you're on BT, here's how you can opt into the new Call Protect service and stop those annoying calls.
How to opt into BT Call Protect
Getting the BT nuisance call prevention on your home phone is really simple. You’ll need to be a BT home phone customer and you’ll be able to do it direct from your BT account online.
If you head to http://www.bt.com/callprotect, sign in and you’ll see a little switch that will turn on the features.
If you ever want to turn the service off, you can just go to the same place and tap that button again. Alternatively you can ring 0800 389 1572 to activate (or deactivate) the feature over the phone.
How BT Call Protect works
BT is using crowd sourced information to identify nuisance numbers, but will mostly use the BT Blacklist for the Call Protect service.
BT Blacklist has been collated by a team at BT, which has been working hard to identify patterns of how nuisance calls work. If it sees odd patterns such as the time of day or lots of numbers from a foreign country, BT will then ring customers to see if it was in fact a nuisance call.
If enough customers say it was irritating, BT will then add it to the BT Blacklist and block the number.
According to Tim Shaw, Director of Voice and Multimedia at BT, the company also uses information provided directly by customers and other information collated by BT.
Shaw said, “We have a team working 24/7 looking for calling patterns and logging it into a real time database.”
Will you have important calls blocked?
If you’re worried about useful calls being blocked, you’ll find all of your blocked numbers will appear on your online account so you can see if anything has been blocked by mistake.
You can then call it back if you're concerned the number is genuine. You can also turn off the Call Protect service at any time via the internet or over the phone.
