I got a call today in which the caller (who sounded intoxicated) asked to speak to Mrs. Blue Sky. I looked at the Caller ID and it reads “unknown caller”. I am leery. I say, “She’s not here” (not a lie). She then asks for Mr. Blue Sky. I tell her he’s not here, either (obviously a lie). The caller says she will call back at a later time. I tell to please not do that. She asks why. I say, “Well, your number doesn’t appear on my Caller ID, so how do I know you’re not running some sort of scam?”. She thens tells me she’s with Discover Card (which we have) and she can be reached at such-and-such number. I didn’t record the number or the name. I should have, though.
My question is: Why wouldn’t a company as a big as Discover want their number displayed on Caller ID units?
I’ve also had calls from other reputable companies with the same results. I rarely answer any call if the name doesn’t appear in the display. In this case, my son answered the phone.
They say they are from Discover Card and other big companies with whom you already do business. The problem is that they are not calling to confirm if your card has been stolen or even to let you know that your credit limit has been increased. They are actually a company who is affiliated with Discover Card and they are calling to offer you a great opportunity to purchase widgets at a low introductory price which will be conveniently billed to your Discover Card.
In other words…they are telemarketers.
Telemarketers have, in increasing numbers, been identifying themselves on caller ID, but that is still the exception to the telemarketing rule.
The best piece of advice…don’t answer if the call comes up anonymous. Have an answering machine. If they really want to talk to you about something important, they will identify themselves and you, and they will will give you a brief description of the issue. At that point, you can decide if you want to return the call.
By the way, if you know someone who happens to work at Discover Card and they call you from work, I would guess that the company’s name would appear on the caller ID. Mine does, that’s for sure. (BTW, I don’t work at Discover)
Though I agree with the above poster sometimes weird things happen. When I call out from my phone the name of the company I work for appears on my caller ID. If I call from a phone in another department it comes thru as “Unknown”
Telemarketers almost always show up as “Out of Area” or “Unavailable,” whereas these days most ordinary people are identified, unless they’re calling from outside the country.
Another characteristic of telemarketers is that the number is dialed by a computer, and when you answer it routes the call to an available operator. So there is a second or two after you say “Hello” before the telemarketer responds. So when I get a cal from “Out of Area” and get no response to my “Hello” I just hang up before they have a chance to say a word.
My mother works at the local school board office and her caller ID on my cell phone is UNKNOWN, even though I have her number programmed in. I always assumed it was because of the PBX at work.
My company uses a digital 800 number thing where all calls to our # are directed to our personal cell phones (creates the illusion of an office!). No caller ID available there either.
Slightly amusing thing is when I see UNKNOWN I assume it’s from the 800 number. I answer and wait for the system to tell me the # of the caller. Mom gets confused because I don’t say “hello”
My understanding is that certain types of in-house phone systems do not register on Caller-ID for some technical reason. For example, here in Kansas City, calls from my customers who work at Hallmark Cards show “Unknown” (or “Out of Area” or “Unavailable,” depending on the particular brand of Caller-ID box). I doubt they have any reason to try to bypass Caller-ID. I just figure they have an established, working phone system there and no incentive to update it so it will register on Caller-ID. I also figure that telemarketing companies intentionally use systems that don’t register on Caller-ID–just one more reason they should rot in hell.
Coupla things: First, they’re probably calling from a large call center. Many times, the phone systems that are used in these offices won’t show up on caller id. I don’ t know if this is intentional, or simply because caller id is aimed towards standard, analog phones.
Secondly, if they’re your run-of-the-mill sleazy telemarketer they don’t want their phone number visible. However, this may have come back to bite them in the ass – many folks with caller id have their boxes set up to reject unidentifiable numbers.
I agree, some big company’s internal phone systems do not show the proper number so that caller-ID will work.
Here at work if I make an our-bound call it shows up with the general mail box line so even if you tried to call back, it wouldn’t help you.
Because I have access to telephone switch information, I’ve looked at it while my cell phone got an “unknown number” and I figure it’s just the PBX system than anything else. When I looked it up it would show the core number making the call (probably the legally registered phone number of whatever company tried to call me).
Most reputable telemarketers now identify themselves via caller ID. However, not every area of the country accepts the identification. So, although “My Company Name Here” might show up on 80% of phones dialed, it won’t show up on all of them through no fault of the company.
Therefore, the new national Do Not Call registry legislation (article linked by muttrox) won’t really have a great impact on the Caller ID portion of your question. Reputable companies are already using it (and complying with state Do Not Call lists to boot). Disreputable companies will probably continue to ignore standard above-board direct marketing practices as put forth by the Direct Marketing Association - www.the-dma.org.
The only change is that marketers who now ignore the Do Not Call registry will have the potential to be fined at a greater rate of frequency. If it’s worth it to them as a cost of doing business, they will continue to call. If not, they’ll go out of business. And reputable marketers will have a huge headache trying to comply with both a national list as well as 50 state lists, each with its own quirks (and costs.) Thus, many will choose to limit outbound calling to existing customers rather than attempt to comply with 51 disparate and expensive lists.
I’m certainly no expert in telecommunications (though my boss has a Masters in it; I’ll ask him about this subject later today if he isn’t busy), but we have a PBX where I work and calls from the digital phone lines there show up just fine on my caller ID at home.
neutron star perhaps your company has a more updated PBX system than a small Ohio school district? Some of the big companies we deal with will show the direct line’s # (someone’s desk) and some others will do what badmama says and shows the core #.
I also get about 10 “no answer” calls a day - meaning I say HELLO and no one responds. This is on my land line with no caller ID. They get hung up on immediately. Works great!
Many large company exchanges connect to the public network without providing an internal phone number. This is often because the internal number may not have an external equivalent and the exchange isn’t smart enough to work this out. The larger and more complicated the internal network the more likely this is.
All they could do is supply a central exchange/reception number, which is of course worse than useless as the operator/receptionist answering your return call has no idea who you are or who called you in the first place. So they usually don’t supply any number.
My own desk phone, when shown on outside caller ID services, most of the time just says “**** ***** Company” and gives a generic number I’ve never tried calling (although it’s our exhange [the three digit part]). Sometimes it comes up unknown, but my extension has never shown up.
One other thing to consider is that they can turn the phone number on and off at will.
I was in a meeting the other day and my cell phone vibrated, twice. I just pushed the ‘ignore’ button and it stopped (I haven’t turned on the voice mail system yet).
When I looked at my missed call list later, the first call was from “unknown number” and the second, made only moments later, was from an 1-800-number I could call back (United Airlines, probaby wondering why I didn’t fly to New York on my award miles ticket last week).
**Morgainelf **: Thanks for providing the official word, but I have to say that does not agree with my experience at all. Or else I am almost never called by “reputable telemarketers.” The few times I have gotten telemarketing calls from Caller-IDed companies it was almost always a small local company wanting to service my furnace, or something.
The vast, vast majority of telemarketing calls I get, from MCI/WorldCom (the most annoyingly persistent company in the world, from my experience) and other major companies who are presumably using large telemarketing companies, NEVER identify themselves.
Could this be a case of 90% of telemarketers giving the other 10% a bad name?
Hi commasense! (Cute name - I could use some!) There are a host of “loopholes”. Some industries are excluded from complying with the new legislation. These include newspapers (Hi, would you like to receive a subscription?), non-profit groups (Hi, would you like to buy tickets to the Fireman’s banquet?), and any company that you have an existing business relationship with.
This is what I do, and get almost no telemarketing calls any longer:
Register for the DMA’s “do not call” list. You can find it at www.the-dma.org. It costs $5 to register online, or I think you can mail your request and it will only cost you postage.
I block all non ID’d calls. This does not block Out of Area calls, but does block all of the local (Hi, I notice you recently bought a house and might like to buy insurance/alarm systems/landscaping/etc.) calls. Those companies are the most likely to not use the DMA’s lists to scrub their list.
Many, many states have Do Not Call lists. Register for yours if you have one.
The national Do Not Call registry website will be up in July, and you will be able to register there as well. I don’t have the address yet.
Finally, business to business telemarketers are also exempt from the registry, so my home business phone (separate from my personal phone) gets inundated with telemarketing calls and there is nothing I can do about it (afaik).
Generally, any office having 24 or more voice lines will have a direct PSTN (public switched telephone network) trunk. Customers using a direct PSTN trunk are responsible for providing all signalling information, including caller ID information, required to route and bill the calls. If your in-house phone system’s network interface does not support generation of caller ID information, your calls will not carry it. The telephone company will not generate it for you (as it would if you had POTS – plain old telephone service).
Since the network address that identifies the trunk termination at the telemarketer’s PBX (private branch exchange) is sufficient to build the route through the network and bill network usage, there is no business reason why the originating station identification has to be on each call. As such, the phone company does not enforce calling number injection (there being no business reason to do so) and so calls from such businesses go out without caller ID data.
Regulatory agencies could (but currently do not) require trunked customers to generate calling number data on all calls, probably because this would result in costly upgrade costs for businesses still using older in-house switching equipment that does not support originating station injection, and would also require telephone companies to enforce originating station information from private branch exchanges.
I work for the local office of a fortune 500 company and we would like our number and name to show up on caller I.d. Unfortunately we have this Avays switch with trunk lines.
The gist is that when you dial out, you just get assigned a generic trunk line instead of a hard #.
We’re currently going back and forth with Avaya and our local provide to figure out how to get a signal for caller I.D. It is proving incredibly difficult.
