I get zero spam calls on my cell phone.
My wife had her first spam call since we moved back to Japan almost two years ago, and it was a scammer.
We rarely get wrong number calls anymore. The vast majority of personal calls using the LINE app I mentioned before so the number of times you need to input numbers is a small fraction of personal calls.
Heheh, for the last few years of using a landline without caller ID I answered the phone “Bueno”. I have a distinctive voice and am well known as an idiot, so anyone who knew me would hear my voice and realize they were talking to me, and proceed in English. If you didn’t know me and were a telemarketer worth your salt, you’d proceed in Spanish.
These days, unless I’m on call, my ringer is off. So I’m unlikely to answer at all, and you will need to leave a message (and actually state what you are calling about) if you want me to reply. If I’m on call, I’ll answer with basically “This is scabpicker.”
A significant portion of the unknown # calls that I get never leave a VM & a significant portion of those that do are Indian headhunters. I suspect it’s the connection from India or maybe just that they are soft spoken but between the volume & their poor English it’s hard to understand a lot of them. It’s not that I’m opposed to a headhunter calling me it’s just that so much of what they’re calling about it crap that I’m not interested in, like a contract position…in another state. Send me an email about the position, & for Og’s sake right up front I want to know about it - location, whether it’s FT or contract, & job title so I can see in preview if I want to delete it. I don’t care that you work for a minority owned company that has been in business for x years & that you home school service puppies in your spare time. Treat me like Joe Friday - just the facts, ma’am!
Unless I’m expecting a call, anything that comes up with no name in Caller ID almost always doesn’t get answered; the only exception is if I’m in a playful mood & feel like answering in another language or something.
I have on occasion done a Calvin.
“Ghostbusters, whaddya want?”
THAT’S where I got it! Couldn’t remember.
I get a lot of calls for “Joseph Encenias” on my cellphone, despite having it for the past nine years. Usually, that’s collection agencies or legal firms looking to serve him. About once or twice every month or so, it’s callers from a specific town in New Mexico asking if “he [Joseph] sells tires.” My normal traffic though, are calls from a distinct set of towns around the country. So, if I answer the phone (depending on circumstances) I’ve got two basic answers:
The latter seems to help throw off people that don’t know who they’re calling.
Note: I’m not sure if the tires thing is code for someone wanting to buy or sell drugs. Normally calls from that town go straight to voicemail, and are often re-dialed. But . . . there are a lot of older-sounding senior-citizen types calling for tires as of late.
Tripler
Joe, if you’re reading this, I think your abuelo Mike wants a set of 185/60R13s, and a dime bag.
I go one better and I answer my work phone as “[Company name], Hogarth speaking”. Even then, wrong number callers still ask if this is Joe’s house or whatever.
IME a lot of workers answer their phone with some variation along the lines of CompanyName, DepartmentName, FirstName, how can I help you?
All delivered at 200 syllables per second while still pulling the phone up to their face or still reaching for the “answer” button.
Which results in me hearing / comprehending exactly none of it before the “help you” part and I’m not even 100% sure the word was actually “help”.
So the first words out of my mouth are: “Please repeat all of that now that I can hear you”. Annoyance often ensues at their end.
Don’t be that person.
That’s rude. You know what number you called - just ask them the question you called to ask. You don’t need to enforce proper voice modulation for people you don’t employ.
What I think is an interesting bit of history is being hinted at here. When the telephone was first invented, there was no standard for how one should answer the telephone. Ahoy was Alexander Graham Bell’s suggestion, while Thomas Edison thought hello was better.
How about I want to confirm I have the right department? And if this is actually who is taking care of me, not just a receptionist / phone call transferrer I want their name for my call notes and so I can thank them by name at the end?
Not quite so rude.
If (part of) their sssigned tasks are to answer the phone that way, they are failing unless it is intelligible
No, it’s still rude, especially as you originally worded it. “I have a question about X, can you help me with that?” There - now you’re being polite, they don’t have to complete their intro again and the conversation is progressing.
Answering phones all day can be a shitty job - it definitely is if they’re rushing through the mandatory intro. Let’s all be kind to people with shitty jobs.
Hehehe, I wouldn’t call it rude, but you’d get “This is scabpicker” repeated politely as if it were a blank stare.
If you called me on my work number, I’d expect you to know who I am and why you were calling me instead of someone else. At the same time, I’d wonder why you thought your problem was so important it needed a phone call and not just a text message over the company’s chat system, or maybe an email.
I like your phone tip “I’m looking for info about X, can you help me with that?” It’s a rare thing for me to call from that position but will remember to do so.
Depends who’s calling?
“Yello!” “Talk to me!” “You are five by five and in the pipe!” “Who loves ya, baby?” “McCloud!”
Eh…for a known business…a doctor/dentist office, either “Hello!” or “This is ____!” is fine.
Anyone else? They don’t deserve the pleasant tones of my voice. “We’re sorry, the voice mailbox of ____ _____ is full.” Or whatever it says.
Or possibly a gruff, “Yeah?”
“This is Johanna.”
Anything else is pointless and superfluous. I would not pick up in the first place unless the caller was someone who had legit business with me and would know my name.
Someone reads Harlen Coben. Hamster sandwiches with mayonaise are delicious. And someone likes Dorothy Parker.
Or, if likely to be a spammer, a panicky whisper, “It’s done, but there’s blood everywhere”
That would require my having given them my phone number.
Back when I was young and single and didn’t have caller ID, I usually answered with one of:
“Iowa Dinosaur Protection League, can I help you?”
“Palace of the Imperial Fudd, Fudd Junior speaking.”
“Martian Embassy, Undersecretary Skleewonk speaking. May I help you.”
Then there are the people whose machine starts talking as soon as my phone picks up and tells them to leave a message. My voicemail message ends, recording begins, and the entire message I get consists of half a phone number (possibly followed by “Thank you”).