It's a modern day nuisance

Modern life is full of irritants
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Losing the remote control, smartphones which are out of battery by lunch and Katie Hopkins are all enough to cause anyone to choke on their skinny latte.

Life moves so quickly that anything which slows us down will sour our day and, more than likely, prompt us to moan to loved ones or take to Facebook or Twitter to share our disquiet. Venting one’s spleen in this way usually means that all is well the following day.

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But there is one contemporary scourge which isn’t as easy to shrug off: the nuisance call. Unwanted telephone calls plague millions of us and are a source of real distress for some.

My approach to unsolicited sales calls is simple: if I am interested in what they are selling then I will give them a minute of my time, unless they convince the call is worth missing even more of Cash In The Attic for.

If their call is of some use to me then I will listen and if it isn’t then I (usually politely) end the call. The trouble arises if these plucky chancers disregard instructions not to call again, then that is when straight talking is required. A demand to speak to a manager or a threat to report them to Ofcom.

That usually stops them ringing but the trouble really begins if you are unfortunate enough to be targeted by companies using automated messages, which bombard punters until they are forced to hide in the airing cupboard in a bid to escape the menace.

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These calls are not illegal if the companies responsible have permission to contact you,meaning the onus is on us to always tick the box which says you don’t want to be pestered whenever entering competitions.

But this is reliant on these companies sticking to the rules and some clearly don’t. Last week such a firm was fined £270,000 for making an ear-ringing 22 million calls,in breach of data protection laws, giving us all some hope. Following the court case it was revealed that the owner of the company has four marketing firms which have made £445,000 in just two years. With rewards like this we can expect to be irritated by unwanted phone calls for some time to come.

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