I have only ever once received a cold-call on my home phone and that was three weeks ago
You are very lucky. I have copied below something I posted here about a month ago in response to a query:
'It is so bad that we bought a couple of 'caller display' 'phones - one upstairs one down so you don't break your neck trying to reach the 'phone - and the answer machine is permanently on. The cold calling nearly always comes from a call centre and shows up as 'number withheld' on the 'phone's screen, so we don't pick up the 'phone. They don't leave a message either; in fact they are cute enough so they can usually time it to cut the connection before the answer machine clicks in and costs them some money. There is the added advantage of being able to answer inconvenient callers at our leisure!'
There is a blocking service available in the UK through BT which we have now initiated and it does cut out call centres but not people calling from their own 'phones.
