006329237163

I was contacted by this outfit calling themselves Intelliserve (I got them to spell it out to make sure) in the UK on 12th May 2012 despite my longstanding TPS registration.

Their calling number was only displayed as WIthheld International and when I challenged them on my registration with the TPS later on in the call they claimed they were exempt because this was "market research".  Intelliserve clearly does exist and is their real name as their details can be found at http://www.businesslist.ph/company/177231/intelliserve-corporation  When asked they also confirmed that they were based in the Phillippinnes as the accent of the caller had already suggested to me.  I refused to answer their fake so called "research" questions and asked to be transferred to a supervisor.  This happened but when I challenged her that they were not doing market research and they were gathering data to sell to cold call sales operations she hung up on me,

Like previous versions of this scam then carried out by Indian call centres using the names of the Lifestyle Research Centre or National Consumer Research Centre they claimed they wanted to ask my opinions on various products and well known companies and they already knew my name proving the call was not at random but using a database.

If I had gone on with the "survey" my data would then undoubtedly have been sold for further misuse by various aggressive cold call making UK operations such as expensive installed burglar alarms etc where they might even have called at my doorstep.  No doubt the dozy and useless TPS and equally useless and dozy ICO will not do anything on the basis the call came from overseas but in my view it does come within their enforcement ambit under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) because the data is being gathered on instructions from UK organisations who want to misuse it.

See https://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08844511237 and https://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/06468451863 for previous examples of this same scam using various Indian call centres.

Very informative post - thanks. Intelliserve are currently calling houses in my area (South Wales). They seem very persistent - I've hung up on them three times. Fortunately I don't get a lot of phone calls, and any unexpected call where there is delay before the caller talks gets me into full non disclosure mode.

If you don't know the caller - don't tell them a thing. Be alert !