[jambutty]

Originally Posted by garinda

Although I was angry yesterday, after being woken from a two hour sleep, my first in forty eight hours, and it was physically hard to answer the door, I'm quite compos mentis enough to tell me I'm not interested in anything they are trying to flog, sadly a lot of elderly people are not.

I don't think it's selfish for cold calling to be made illegal, They would still be welcome to post information through the letterbox, and offer contact details, if people are intersted in knowing more.

We have the option of opting out of telephone cold calling, with the telephone preference service, we should have the same right to opt out with door to dood hawkers.

My grandmother was robbed of hundreds of pounds by someone who claimed he was offering to clean her guttering. Sadly her's is not the only case I know of, of people being taken advantage of, besides the numerous cases of criminals using the pretence of being a door to door salesman to enter, and rob the homes, of the vunerable.

I'd hate to think of anyone taking advantage of you Jambutty, once your faculties start to fade.

A stranger knocking on your door is hardly likely to know about your physical situation or that fact that you were sleep deprived. He was only doing his/her job. Would it have been any different if the caller happened to be a copper making door-to-door enquiries or the gasman come to read your gas meter – if you have one? No of course not. Yet both are cold callers.

Some people do post flyers etc. through the letterbox – we call it junk mail and people moan about that and think that it ought not be allowed.

Like reporting spam email, using the preference service to bar calls from known callers is a waste of time. They have to call you first before you know who they are and what the number is and in any case most are ‘withheld numbers’. You can get rid of most cold calls by being blatantly rude to the caller and even abusive. The message gets through eventually. All I seem to get these days is those automatic calls where it is a machine that calls with a pre-recorded message.

You should join reality. The world will not pander to your whims and will carry on regardless. You have to fit in with the world. Put a notice on your door. Keep your phone within arm’s reach at all times. My phone is by my left hand when I’m sat here at the keyboard. When I settle down to watch TV it is on a chair next to me. If it wakes me when I am in bed asleep I get up, not to answer the phone but to go to the toilet. If it is still ringing by the time that I get back I will answer it, otherwise I dial 1471 to see who it was.

We only hear of the cases where an older person is taken advantage of. It is sad when it happens but we never hear of the hundreds of thousands of cases where the OAP has not been taken advantage of. When was the last time that you saw the news item “An 85 years old woman opened her door and was not mugged by the caller.”?

To paraphrase JF Kennedy – don’t expect the world to do something for you, you do something to protect yourself.

My door is locked at dusk and if someone calls I put the chain on as I look to see who it is. In fact even during the day I will put the chain on before answering the knock at the door until I know who is there and what they want.