In the past few weeks I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of cold calls that we have been receiving. It strikes me a strange, as since a change to the law in Germany a few months ago the call centres now risk a fine if they do not transmit their telephone number when they call you.

This seems to have held them back somewhat for a while, but now there is no stopping them.

Recently we have been getting calls on a daily basis. Sometimes these were so-called “ping” calls, where a computer dials a lot of numbers at once and connects the first ones that answer, dropping the other lines when all the call centre agents have been assigned. Other have called us “on behalf of” a publisher – several times.

It is, of course, now a lot easier to track who is calling more than once because you can match the numbers up. I was able to therefore confront the lady telling me that I had won a weeks holiday at the Edersee with the fact that her colleague had called less than an hour beforehand to offer me something to do with mobile phones.

Furthermore, having told her that I would report her company to the telecommunications regulator if they called me again, I was able to remind her next colleague of this a few days later when she called to ask if I would like to test some new products. I also reminded her that I would be reporting her employer.

Reporting a company to the regulator is fairly straightforward. You download a form from their website and fill out as much information as you can before sending it off. I did this last week and was surprised to receive a letter back within a few days, confirming that the case would be looked into.

German companies are having a hard time finding new customers at the moment, and with consumer laws being so tight here it is not easy for them to use direct marketing methods. All the same, to cold call someone once is unfortunate, to do it three times is asking for trouble…

A Kurbelinduktor is a hand-operated dynamo, similar to a crank.  By turning it, an electrical current is generated.

The first telephones required the user to turn the handle to create the current that opened the flap on the Klappenschrank.

These days the Kurbelinduktor technology can be found in wind-up mobile phone chargers and torches.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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A Klappenschrank was a piece of equipment in the early days of the telephone, that was used to connect two subscribers with each other.

It was operated by a Fräulein vom Amt and was effectively a board made up of holes – one hole per line, covered with a small cap.  The caps would flap to show that someone wanted to make a phone call, and often a light bulb would show that a line was still in use.  Two holes would be connected by a wire to establish the call between the two parties.

They stopped being used on the telephone network in the western German states in 1966, and in the GDR in 1987.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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