BlogScam AlertResearch Shows UK Spends 250 Million Hours Listening to Nuisance Calls

Research Shows UK Spends 250 Million Hours Listening to Nuisance Calls

Kim Fai Kok

Nov 26, 20153 min readEdited on Apr 24, 2018

We recently conducted an unbelievable survey that gave great insight into how UK residents are being bombarded by the spam trolls.

We recently conducted an unbelievable survey that gave great insight into how UK residents are being bombarded by the spam trolls.

Highlights from our Research

  • UK residents 60% more likely to receive a spam call on their mobile than a call from their own parents
  • Brits spend 5 hours a year each listening to cold calls, adding up to 250M hours collectively
  • 10.5 million people have missed a call from an unwell relative, believing them to be a spam caller
  • Less than a third know how to eliminate spam calls to their mobile phone
nuisance-calls-truecaller-uk

The Breakdown

Our research shows on average, Brits receive 2.78 calls per week from their parents but will receive 4.42 spam calls to their mobile in the same period of time – nearly 60% more! Yikes! Additionally, close to 1.6 million Brits answer more than 20 spam calls to their mobile phone a week, averaging at three spam calls per day – five times the national average.*

The rise in spam calls is becoming an increasing drain on our time, as our survey results show, each Brit wastes 5 hours a year on the phone with spam callers – the equivalent of 250M hours per year*1 collectively across the UK.

More than just a time drain, spam calls are changing the way Brits interact with their mobile phones. More than two-thirds of the adult population (36.1 million) admit they have not answered important calls as they have believed them to be a cold caller. The calls being missed may have a significant impact on our working and personal lives with almost 29% claiming to have missed a call from an old friend, while nearly 23% have missed an important call from work. Worryingly, close to 10.5 million people have missed calls from an unwell relative as a consequence of trying to avoid unwanted spam calls.

The top five unanswered important calls, according to Truecaller, are from:

  • An old friend – 29%
  • Work – 23%
  • The bank – 22%
  • An unwell relative – 20%
  • Other (including doctor and hospital appointments) 15%

Despite spam calls being such an intrusion into the day-to-day lives of UK residents with the willingness to miss important calls to escape from being sucked into a cold call, few know how to effectively eliminate spam calls to their mobile phones. Further research from our survey shows less than 30% of Brits actually take the steps to block unwanted calls, leaving the majority of the UK vulnerable to more unwanted calls.

The Solution

We are encouraging UK residents to use Truecaller’s suite of apps in a bid to eliminate nuisance calls. Not only can we help identify unknown numbers (whether it’s a colleague, the boss’s new number, a doctor, etc.). We offer our apps completely for free with no hidden costs. We want to make sure people have a way to be more knowledgeable about who is calling them, so they can decide to take the right call.

Kim Fai Kok

Nov 26, 20153 min read

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