According to the Telephone Preference Service's (TPS) website (see below) they cannot stop market research calls.
However we keep receiving sales calls from India pretending to be market research to get around the TPS rules.
Has anyone else had this problem and does anyone know how to stop them? (I believe this just shows how utterly useless the TPS is)
Telephone Preference Service (TPS) aims to reduce live “direct marketing” calls and is unable to stop calls from organisations who are conducting research. Genuine research calls are not deemed as direct marketing as they generally relate to information gathering or seeking of opinions whereas the purpose of a direct marketing call would be to sell or market a product or service.
They are people too! Just talk to them. Ask about their kids, work, private life, hobbies etc. I had one on the phone for 45 minutes before they finally hung up on me! Haven't had any calls since. ;-))