Dealing With Unsolicited Phone Calls and Messages

If you receive unsolicited phone calls and text messages even though you are on the Do Not Call registry, you can file a report with the FCC and post messages on these "Who's Calling Me" type websites. But there is something else you can do that will usually work even better and faster at stopping them; report them to the company who's phone service they are using!

Go to a reverse lookup site, I used www.numberinvestigator.com, and type in the phone number you received the call from. It will tell you where the call originated from and what service they used (the two I got today both were from T-Mobile phones in Ohio). Then, find the website for that phone company and find their Customer Service number.

Call them and ask to speak to someone in their "Fraud Dept". Give them as much info as you can about the call/text, including the phone number it came from and any phone numbers,emails or websites it lists.

It seems like a lot of these telemarketing calls and text messages are now coming from cell phones because it's harder to track them down. Most of these cell phone companies (and the regular phone service companies) have fraud departments and they act quickly to shut these people down when they get a complaint about someone using their service to make unsolicited, harassing phone calls or text messages. They don't like it, it makes THEM look bad! Not only that, when you sign the contract to use their service,you agree not to use it for these purposes.

I have had to do this in the past and the phone calls/text messages stopped almost immediately, whereas the report to the FCC just makes them aware of the problem but doesn't stop it as fast.

By Judy = Oklahoma from Tulsa,OK