As soon as Caller ID came out, I jumped on the bandwagon. The prospect of identifying “heavy breathers” and other calls you’d like to know about (the phone rang twice, and then they hung up), as well as knowing who’s calling before you pick up the phone was just too good a bargain to pass up.
Well, years have passed, and I find that I'm getting more and more "Out of Area", "Private Call", etc. messages. Clearly, the Call ID system has a glitch. I guess my main question is: why can't the phone system who sells me Caller ID identify those calls that are coming in via other long distance carriers? Private Call and the like are assumed to be purchased by people who don't want others to know their identity. But all those "Out of Area" caller id messages are starting to make me feel like I'm paying for a non-existent service.
Anyone have any solutions? [Please, no one suggest stopping Caller ID. I use it personally and in my business. When it works, it IS valuable.]
The Caller ID data is sent by the originating caller’s telco, provided they support Caller ID in the first place. Not every little mom & pop telco is on the bandwagon yet, so sometimes the call is delivered with no “identity”.
Even if the call doesn originate in a more technologically current LEC (local exchange carrier), another requirement is that every carrier that handles the call must also support Caller ID data, otherwise the “identity” is again lost.
Finally, some calls that originate from behind a PBX or that are initiated by a dialing computer may not send Caller ID data, but I’m not up on that enough to know for sure.
You can instruct your carrier to block calls where the caller has Caller ID privacy enabled, but there are disadvantages to that as well.
I simply don’t answer my phone unless I recognize the caller’s number. If no number appears (for whatever reason), I screen the call with my answering machine. 99% of the people who might possibly want to call me could just as easily send me an email, and usually do. This tactic has resulted in my having successfully avoided answering any calls from telemarketers, salesmen, pollsters or other undesireables as far back as I can remember having Caller ID.
You’ve already seen mine, why can’t I see yours?? If you want to talk to me, show me your number, dammit.
–In high school, voted most likely to get stuck in a clarinet.
As far as mangeorge’s “dime”, if he really wanted to stay hidden, Ma Bell will charge him extra for that. The point is…if he doesn’t want to pay the extra twenty-five cents, how come I can’t see he’s calling? (I respect your dime, mangeorge, dear.) After all, I’ve paid the extra fifty cents for the privilege.
opus, the majority of the calls I get aren’t from PBX locales, nor are they from small mom and pop phone companies. As a result, I’m a bit frustrated by that “Out of Area” message from one major city to another.
Anyone have any other ideas/solutions/suggestions on what I might say to Ma Bell, who’s charging for an apparently mostly non-existent service?
Your caller’s data still may be passing through an IEC (interexchange carrier) somewhere along the route it takes to you. Everybody who has a hand in transporting the call must be Caller ID friendly, or the identity is lost.
I get calls from a specific location in California several times each week (Pacific Bell is the LEC out there) and at least one out of ten times the call shows up as unavailable, out of area or sometimes it just says California on my ID display. The call doesn’t always take the same route and once it reahces the outskirts of the LEC’s footprint must be handed off to inter-lata carriers who may or may not support the Caller ID data (the extra data is resource-consuming and thus far no law requires them to carry data they may consider superfluous).
If the originating carrier sends the data but you don’t receive it, that’s the only explanation I can think of.
Mangeorge:
If you’re dime is going into my pocket, I’ll think about giving your argument some weight. But my point was basically: don’t expect me to pick up the phone if you’re not willing to identify yourself first. I equate it to answering the door- sure, you can show up at my house wearing a dark trench coat and a ski mask and say I don’t have to open the door, but why on earth would you do that in the first place?
I’ve posted this before. When caller ID first showed up I spent a week trying to figure out what to do with blocked calls.
Conclusion: They win!
If they (define “they”: the person on the other end) has decided once I know who they are I wouldn’t want to talk to them…they win!
So “Out of Area” calls went on the block.
But I did get lucky.
My Aunt in So. Cal. blocks, but her ID comes out “Private.”
So she rings through.
Haven’t talked to a telemarketer in a long time, though the number averages 30 “out of area” hits a day.
Mazey - I don’t think you should look at the glass as half empty – even though the numbers aren’t showing up, that tells you something! That’s mostly what I get on mine too, but I consider I’m benefitting from it – if it’s an out-of-the-area call, and no message is left on the machine, it’s a marketing call. I simply do not pick up. That is a valuable service to me – saves me time and aggravation. If the caller wants to talk to me, they can leave a message. Simple.
I get tons of telemarketer calls. They show up as ‘unavailable’ on Caller ID.
But we said before if someone is calling & they won’t identify themselves, have them hit *82 [or is it *83] & it flashes their number on your caller id.
I really don’t see the problem here.
You want caller ID, fine. Get it. I want blocking, fine, I got it. We’ll work out the details as they arise. If I call a friend or family member who has caller ID, I just do the *82 thing as handy mentioned.
My main objection to having my phone number displayed is that when I call a business (Target, Wallmart, et al) for information, I’ll decide if I want to give them my number. An interesting side note; You can’t have your number blocked to 800 & 900 type calls. Hmmm, I wonder why.
And when I make a phone call, I really don’t feel the same as when I’m knocking on someone’s door. Caller ID seems so unfriedly.
Peace,
mangeorge
Well, I don’t necessarily fry my phone calls <g>, but I do appreciate knowing who’s calling before I pick up my phone. Personally, as others have said, I can usually tell the telemarketers on my personal phone, and, since I work out of my home, it’s nice to not have to pick up the house phone while at work for those calls.
I like knowing who’s calling my business phone as well. I’m more prepared for the call…be it a client or a telemarketer.
My phone company is US West, and at least once every other day, I get calls that show up as “unavailable”. Even though US West is supposedly blocking calls that have no caller ID information (*77), many of these slip through – and most of the time they’re telemarketing computer dialers with no humans to pick up the call, so just hear silence and then a click. Is there anything I can do to keep these from ringing in the first place?
How did we ever survive before caller ID and this rather insane demand to know who’s on the other end of the telephone before picking it up? There’s a real easy solution to all of this. Don’t pick up the phone if you don’t want to take the call. Don’t pick it up during dinner. Don’t pick it up after 10 PM. I pay $3.95 a month for an unpublished number in my home. Why should you be able to have my phone number if I don’t want you to have it, absent some illegal conduct on my part?
–This demand to have a “peephole” on the front door of the telephone seems to have grown as the business of telemarketing grew.
To ignore a knock at the door (ringing phone) at dinner time seems rude.
What we seem to be looking at is a privacy question that works both ways.
In terms of the 800 numbers at least, it’s because you’re not using your dime - you’re using theirs, and they’re entitled to know who’s spending it.
I work for a company that takes tons of 800-number calls. One of the tools in their arsenal is a list of the phone numbers of call-abusers - call them from one of those phone numbers and all you get is a busy signal. You never even know that you’ve been blocked.
I’m rather surprised to hear that you can’t block caller-id on 900-number calls. Maybe it’s a billing thing, but it still doesn’t sound right to me. (“right from wrong”, not “your claim isn’t right”)
The whole thiis just a scam by the telco’s to make money. They charge you to see caller ID then they charge you to block caller ID. And now they are bringing out a new “call management” system which even costs you more money. Whats the problem with the old system of using an answering machine and just screen the calls? The real problem is the curiosity of the person receiving the calls, they want to know who calls and why…
It’s jst like junk email we think we got a letter then when we open it by deseption in the subject line by coning us with some crap we open it only to see that it is spam.
Just find the old answering machine in the basement and start screening the calls, save yourself the extra charges by the phone company and don’t get caught up in all these scams they create to get our attention.
We’re lucky in Canada they allow us to block our caller ID for free just by punching in *67 before we make a call, and now they even have a gadget that dials the *67 for you when you pick-up the phone.
I love technology.
Please feel free to email me.
I’m not conceited, I’m convinced! Dandmb50@aol.com
The only stupid question is the one YOU do not ask !!
Sorry, I disagree - it is never rude to ignore a telephone call at any time that you don’t want to speak to someone. It is rude to interrupt dinner with your poor family to answer whoever chooses to call your house at dinner time. Most of them are telemarketers anyway, trying to get you when they know you’ll be home. Let them leave messages, I say.
Miss Manners wrote that we should regard the answering machine as a butler-replacement – it politely informs callers that “Madam is indisposed at the moment, would you care to leave your card?”
Ooh, I love your magazine. My favorite section is `How to increase your word power’. That thing is really, really… really… good. – Homer, ``Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington’’
I see that most of you have to pay money to have Call-ID blocked on your phone. While this may be true in other states, or even counties, in the San Francisco Bay Area Pac-Bell does it for free. And as a matter of fact I would be VERY displeased with any company that would make me pay money to keep my phone number private. Even Cell-One, my cell phone carrier does Call-ID blocking for free.
And for the people who outright refuse Private ID calls, well too bad for you. I am not talking about not answering the phone when you see private, I am talking about the people who have the system set up so that if the ID is private then they get a message telling them to press *82 and call again. I had a friend who did this on his phone because he had the same mentality as you guys, if you will not identify yourself then I will not talk to you. Well after a month he cancelled the service because no one was calling him. My attitude is, if you will not respect my preferance to privacy, then I am not going to call you. Simple.
-N
I have had a strange thing happening with my Caller I.D. lately. Several times, a local number shows on my phone screen, and when I answer, the caller is long distance — not always the same caller, but the same local number.
Sheesh, I hate paying for something that doesn’t work.
I use called id because people don’t know they are calling a deaf person…So far this week Merril Lynch called about 17 times.About 8 telemarketer calls. Ah, no I don’t answer them.