{"id":21897,"date":"2013-08-30T09:01:50","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21897"},"modified":"2013-08-30T09:01:50","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:01:50","slug":"a-profitable-way-to-deal-with-annoying-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/08\/30\/a-profitable-way-to-deal-with-annoying-calls\/","title":{"rendered":"A profitable way to deal with annoying calls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the <em>BBC News<\/em> website, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-23869462\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Kent<\/a> profiles today&#8217;s hero in the ongoing battle against annoying telephone solicitations:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A man targeted by marketing companies is making money from cold calls with his own higher-rate phone number.<\/p>\n<p>In November 2011 Lee Beaumont paid \u00a310 plus VAT to set up his personal 0871 line &mdash; so to call him now costs 10p, from which he receives 7p.<\/p>\n<p>The Leeds businessman told BBC Radio 4&#8217;s <em>You and Yours<\/em> programme that the line had so far made \u00a3300.<\/p>\n<p>Phone Pay Plus, which regulates premium numbers, said it strongly discouraged people from adopting the idea.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Beaumont came up with the plan when he grew sick of calls offering to help him reclaim payment protection insurance (PPI), or install solar panels.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t use my normal Leeds number for anyone but my friends and family.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Once he had set up the 0871 line, every time a bank, gas or electricity supplier asked him for his details online, he submitted it as his contact number.<\/p>\n<p>He added he was &#8220;very honest&#8221; and the companies did ask why he had a such a number.<\/p>\n<p>He told the programme he replied: &#8220;Because I&#8217;m getting annoyed with PPI phone calls when I&#8217;m trying to watch Coronation Street so I&#8217;d rather make 10p a minute.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said almost all of the companies he dealt with were happy to use it and if they refused he asked them to email.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the BBC News website, Joe Kent profiles today&#8217;s hero in the ongoing battle against annoying telephone solicitations: A man targeted by marketing companies is making money from cold calls with his own higher-rate phone number. In November 2011 Lee Beaumont paid \u00a310 plus VAT to set up his personal 0871 line &mdash; so to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,831],"tags":[369,428],"class_list":["post-21897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-business","tag-interesting","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Hb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21898,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21897\/revisions\/21898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}