Since a couple of days I suddenly started getting phone calls from ‘personal investment planners’ or ‘private bankers’ on my direct office number. I regularly get spam calls on my mobile phone, but never on my direct office line. I wonder how they got this number, because it is neither on my business card nor on my email signature. These are normally foreigners working from a call center trying to invite you to financial seminars to help you invest your money. They are extremely annoying and the moment I figure out who they are I hang up immediately. But they have the nerve to call me back 5 minutes later!

If they call the general office number, the receptionist is normally able to stop them from getting through to me. But now that they have my direct number this is starting to give me a headache. I only used to get about 3 calls a day on my direct line, so I always pick it up. But now I had 3 calls just in the past hour!

The problem is that their numbers are not visible, like is the case with most foreign numbers. I assume they call from a call center in Hong Kong or Singapore, but maybe they are just around the corner in Shanghai rerouting the call through the internet. Anyway, if one of you financial spammers is reading this: I am not interested in any of your ‘financial solutions’, so calling me is a total waste of your time.