Trusted Trader

Protecting Scotland from nuisance calls

Friday, 17th April 2015

Nuisance telephone calls are an irritant for everyone, but are a serious problem for older and vulnerable consumers. They may be confused by telemarketing calls that they receive; they may agree to order products that they don’t need; they may be taken advantage of by unscrupulous sales people or scammers. Following on from initial trials carried out by Angus, East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire councils early in 2013, Trading Standards Scotland run a trial to identify the benefits of using call blocking technology to protect older and vulnerable adults across the whole of Scotland.

The project is due to end in July 2015, but interim results show that:

older and vulnerable Scottish residents are currently receiving an average of 46 nuisance calls per month

the number of nuisance calls has increased by 40% over the course of the project – an annualised increase of 26%

the vulnerable people in this study are receiving approx. 50% more nuisance calls than other users of call blocking technology – this suggests that vulnerable people are being targeted

48% of the calls received are nuisance calls

it is estimated that they are receiving two to seven scam phone calls per month

trueCall nuisance call blocking technology is blocking over 95% of the nuisance calls that are received
a total of 117,000 nuisance calls have been blocked during the project.

Find out more about the project and read the full interim report here.

Visit the trueCall website.