Slaying a dragon is easier than ditching phone pests

Things you don’t need: barbecue kits in scotland, berets, another new biography of Marilyn Monroe and phone calls at 10pm to ask if you would like a new boiler.

Everyone has experienced telepestering. it’s the 21st century equivalent of nits, except there isn’t a shampoo that will rid you of robot phone calls offering a conservatory to someone who lives in a flat.

Xternal Property Renovations, a glasgow company, was recently fined £80,000 for making nuisance calls to more than 100,000 people, even though they had registered to opt out of cold calls with the Telephone Preference service.

i have a little sympathy for the people employed as cold callers: it’s a rubbish job phoning irritable people for minimum wage.

But i’ve no sympathy at all for those who service scams such as: ‘i’m phoning from Microsoft to tell you that your computer has a virus.’ These are cons designed to download and install malware, and the best response is to occupy as much of their time as possible with a conversation about how you came to buy your PC and the history of your screensaver.

Believe me, it’s all worthwhile when someone who has called you says angrily ‘you are wasting my time’ after a quarter of an hour.

DiTTo anyone who tries to phish your bank details over the phone; if asked for security information by a caller who claims to be your bank, give incorrect information at first (‘my date of birth is october 5, 1990’). A legitimate caller would query this, but a phisher will accept it and try to use it to withdraw money from your account.

Why not just ban all unsolicited commercial calling? Companies may complain but if you ask anyone who pays for a landline, rather than the few who make money calling it, my guess is that this move would find overwhelming support.

And if the industry believes they are providing a valuable service, then perhaps they should get people to opt-in to receive their calls.

Failing an outright ban, let’s introduce a tiered system of fines for all the things that sap our pleasure of being at home. not just people phoning to offer us things we don’t want in the middle of Posh Pawn, but also whoever keeps scheduling Pirates of the Caribbean on BBC1, especially the third and fourth ones, which are less fun than scurvy.

Then there are overexcited studio audiences sitting through The Voice or The X Factor, who whoop when the singer holds onto a bellowing vibrato. no one can be authentically enthusiastic about watching pub singers.

off-screen, i suggest a £10 per wince for home visiting repairmen pulling faces at whatever requires their hourly rate, as if witnessing their family being eaten by the bear from The Revenant.

And let’s meter customer service hotlines that require you to pass a lengthy multiple-choice test (‘if you know your last name but noT your first name, press...’) to prove your worthiness as a customer in the same codified manner that knights were tested before being allowed to lance a dragon.

Although, if we still had firebreathing dragons, no one would need to sell us a boiler.