I’ve had a couple of unsolicited marketing calls from the same company recently, so In thought I would write a short post about the merits of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

Individuals and businesses can register their phone numbers with the TPS and, after 28 days from registration, it becomes an offence for any company to make an unsolicited call to that number.

This has worked perfectly for me up until a week or so ago when I started getting unsolicited calls from someone “calling on behalf of Golden Charter Funeral Plans – largest independent funeral firm in the UK”. On each occasion the caller asked for someone who doesn’t live at my address (and never has), when I explained this I was told ‘it was my lucky day’ and asked if I had any plans for my funeral. They simply wanted to ‘confirm my address’ so they could send out an information pack to me. Now, hopefully I’ve got a few years ahead of me still but for someone elderly or vulnerable this could be quite a distressing call and they could quite possibly be swayed by it. I asked to speak to the caller’s supervisor on each occasion but as soon as I said that they hung up.

I’ve reported both of these calls to the TPS and lodged a complaint with Golden Charter Funeral Plans. Disturbingly, their very polite Operations Manager emailed me back saying they never embarked on such marketing operations and would willingly surrender their records to the TPS. Less than a week later I have received another call from someone claiming to call from the same firm. Either there is some external marketing being done or, more worryingly, another firm is ringing round pretending to be from Golden Charter Funeral Plans in order to send out their own promotional material.

The very polite response to my complaint from Golden Charter...6 days later I received a call from someone claiming to be from the same company

The TPS are investigating but, from what I gather, there is little they can do unless they know the number that is calling me (it was withheld).

Despite this recent blip, the TPS and the similar Fax Preference Service and Mail Preference Service are excellent at getting rid of the bulk of unwanted marketing communications and I’d thoroughly recommend them. As long as nobody suggests a Conservative Politician Preference Service…