If you get a call from a number you don’t recognize and the person doesn’t leave a message, do you call back?
I don’t. I tend to misdial once a week or so. I just hang up, as I feel silly leaving a “wrong number” message. Pretty frequently, the person will call me back and we go through the whole “sorry, I didn’t mean to call you” thing.
If you do call back, why? Does it ever turn out to be something important?
Poll to follow.
Nope. I don’t even call back numbers I know/recognize if they don’t leave a message.
No, unless I have a reason to think it was a legit call for some reason. I was a convention last year with a bunch of internet-friends, and we’d publicized our phone numbers in order to coordinate. If a got a call from an unknown number, I’d call it back, figuring it was probably one of them.
Other than unusual circumstances like that, no. My father in law gets all bent out of shape if someone mistakenly calls his cell phone, calling them back angrily “How did you get this number, NEVER CALL IT AGAIN!!” It baffles me.
I have caller ID blocked on my cellphone, and I am extremely picky about who I give my number. If I get a number I don’t know calling me I do not answer. If I have nothing better to do I might Google the number for S&G, but it pretty much has to be a wrong number.
I think I’d be inclined to put his number into the public Spamosphere anywhere I could, just out of principle. As a matter of fact, I AM interested in hearing more about your multi-level marketing opportunities! Please call me— very early mornings are best!
I have a friend (whose behavior lately is making me think they should be an ex-friend) who does a really annoying thing:
This person sits there phone in hand all. the. time. and when a text/call comes in they peer at the phone and if the number is unknown they angst over who it might be, whether they should answer it, yadda yadda…
Ugh.
I don’t even answer the phone if it’s an unknown number. Nine times out of ten it’s phone spam. In the event that it’s someone I know, they can leave a message and I’ll call them back.
Sometimes.
If it’s a single call, then never, because most of the time, the person seems to figure out pretty quickly that they misdialed, and there’s no point.
But I’ve had a few repeat callers, some creditors looking for people who aren’t me, sometimes people looking for my ex (even though we never shared this phone number), and once a strange string of calls relating to “the kid” and “the kid needs clothes” and “when are you picking up the kid?”. I knew it wasn’t me or my kid they were calling about, but I couldn’t stand the thought of some poor kid sitting there with no clothes waiting for his ride because his caregiver kept dialing the wrong number! I called that lady back and explained that the four or five calls she’d made in the last half hour hadn’t gotten to their intended destination.
Normally I don’t answer or call back an unknown number.
Right now I’m job hunting, so any unknown number gets answered or called back in case it was job interview related.
If they don’t leave a message I figure it’s a misdial or nothing important. If they do leave a message and it’s not for me they don’t get a call back unless it seems like something urgent I can help them with.
I’ll Google the number if I missed it.
Usually I just answer it.
If I ever misdialed and got that reaction, I would spend the next week or two calling that person every 20 minutes.
If they don’t leave a message, it was either a wrong number (5%) or a telemarketer (95%).
The area code on my cell is from a different state, so if I get a hangup from a local area code, I sometimes call it back because it’s most likely not a misdial.
Do you mean a number that is presented, but which you don’t recognize, or a call with an actual blocked/anonymous number?
Because I might or might not answer a number I don’t recognize, but unless I’m expecting a call, I will NOT answer a blocked, anonymous call, but I will let it go to voicemail and check the message. I figure that any business that doesn’t present their call-back number on the caller-ID is too skeevy to deal with (translation: telemarketers); and people I know who may have misconfigured or anonymous phones, they’ll leave a message and I can call them back.
I’ve only called back a couple times. Once I got a call in the middle of the night and the message was garbled and muffled, and so I called back in case it was someone I knew who needed something and was calling from a number I didn’t recognize.
The other time, my cell phone kept getting calls from an alarm system company telling me that there was an alarm triggered at Staples location 621 or something. After four months of this, I finally called the number back to tell them they needed to change the contact info, but the number on the caller ID didn’t lead anywhere. I just made sure to answer the next time they called and let them know.
Exactly. I voted “I don’t call back even if they leave a message” - if I don’t know you and you leave a message like, “Hi, this is Joe - I need a ride home. Call me!” you’re not getting a call back. I barely call people I know and like. 
My number is one digit off from a famous steakhouse in Chicago. I get lots of calls for them. If the same person calls twice (after being told, noooo, this is NOT the steakhouse), I’ll answer with the name of the steakhouse and cheerfully take their reservation.
Nope.
When my old phone number was floating around online as a contact for wildlife and pet rescue, I would generally call back. Because often those folks want to talk to somebody RIGHT NOW. So I figured if I could be helpful, I would.
Nowadays, never, unless the person leaves an unintelligable message and it might be a client or potential client. Otherwise I assume it’s a wrong number and forget about it.
I don’t bother answering my phone. Most of the time I’m in another room and don’t feel like dropping what I’m doing to run and answer it. If it’s important, like my doctor’s office or something, they’ll leave a message and I’ll get back to them promptly. My doctor will even call my cell if I don’t answer my home line. If it’s family, they’ll call my cell because we all have unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes. And I have distinct ring tones set up for family members so I don’t even need to look at the caller ID.
Brynda, I said “nope” for several reasons, but on rare occasions I have called back. Our land line doesn’t have Caller ID so we don’t know if they called unless we pick up and they hang up immediately. The cell phone is another matter. If we were expecting a call and all we can see is a number that happens to be unfamiliar, we might gamble that it would be worth a callback. Maybe 10-20% of the time, that is.
My basic attitude is if they wanted to speak with me/us they should have left word or they will call back themselves. We had an answering machine for a while but dispensed with it when it went on the blink. I haven’t missed it!