I searched the archives for a while, but didn’t see anything quite like this…
It seems like everytime I get one of those dreaded “Out Of Area” calls, the caller waits till just after my answering machine starts recording to hang up. Is this intentional? Are nefarious telemarketers out there thinking that if they can’t get me to answer - at least they’ll fill up my machine with blank messages?
They are just hoping that you will pick up the phone and talk with them. Personally, I love it when this happens. The telemarketer had to pay for the call with no results. I found that many “out-of-area” calls would hang up just as my answering machine kicks in. I assume this behavior is designed to save them some money. So I have coaxed my answering machine to answer on the very first ring! This screws up caller-id but it insures that those souless telemarketers pay every time they dial my number.
I know what you’re talking about and one guess I have is that it’s caused by whatever sort of dialing apparatus the telemarketer’s use. When I answer the phone and it’s a telemarketer, I always notice a pause of two or three seconds before they start selling whatever it is I don’t want. So maybe when an answer machine picks up, the dialing apparatus they use doesn’t recognize it right away, so the telemarketer has to hang up manually, which will cause the “silent” message on the answer machine. But then again I did no research on this, so I could be totally wrong. Incidentally, the best way I’ve found to piss off telemarketers is to actually let them give you the whole song and dance (if you have the time of course), then sound really interested, then when they’re halfway done signing you up, ask if its ok that you’re not 18. Good times…
What’s happening is that they’re using a predictive dialer. It’s a computer with a huge list of phone numbers and a lot of data concerning how long the average call takes. It figures out how long it has until the next salesperson becomes available, and when it thinks it’s got the timing right, it dials the number so that as soon as your answering machine answers the phone, there’s a salesperson listening in.
Two things can happen when your answering machine kicks in: either the dialer says “whoops, that’s an answering machine” and hangs up, or the salesperson says “whoops, that’s an answering machine” and hangs up. Same effect from your point of view.
If you ever notice you’re getting calls with nobody on the other end (the phone rings, you pick up, you hear “click” and the line goes dead), that means the dialer guessed wrong and dialled your number before there was a salesperson available.
I worked as a drone for a telemarketing firm several years ago. I found out that most telemarketers use machines to do the actual dialing. The drones who do the talking often have no idea what your phone number is.
The dialing system places everyone in a pool. The machine starts dialing and tries to tell when a real person answers the phone. If the machine isn’t convinced there is someone there, it hangs up and tries another number. The drone sits in front of their computer screen waiting for a signal that a connection is ready. The drone then says whatever name pops up to identify the person on the other end of the line. Since the machine keeps the drone waiting until the connection is live, the drone often doesn’t hear anyone say hello.
Sometimes the computer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference and the drone gets to hear the last part of the message. I heard more than my share of those and hung up whenever I did. This doesn’t explain your issue exactly, but it probably has something to do with it.
Like flanksteak said it is a computer that is actually dialing the calls. It hands off the call to a drone whenever it thinks it has a real person on the line as opposed to an answering machine. It determines this by looking for a pause on the other end of the line. Real people answer the phone with “Hello” and then wait for a response. Answering machines go “Hello. This is the Boogerhead residence, blah, blah, blah…”. There is no pause. That’s why you will notice that 2 or 3 second gap between the time you say “Hello” and the telemarketer starts talking.
So use that bit of knowledge to your advantage. If the caller ID is unidentifiable and you hear that gap after your “hello”, hang up.
hmm i dunno last time i worked at one of those horrible telemarketing places , it was a legal isssue the telemarketer isn’t allowed to push or tell too many lies
if it gets recorded on your answer phone theres something
to be held up in court and the company gets sued and goes bust , the company i worked at , somebody said lots of stuff onto an answer phone thinking it was a real person (one of those odd intros) and the company got sued big time
I had a message on my answering machine a while back that would fool the computer gizmos everytime. I’d get home from work and the machine would be full of messages like: “Hello, I’m from Stupid Inc. and I want…hello? hello? <hangup>” It was funny listening to them.
California is currently trying to pass a law so you can get put on the “do not call” list. Here’s a piece from this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/08/21/MN169038.DTL
>>The so-called “predictive dialer” machines dial four or five people at once for a single telemarketer, simultaneously weeding out answering machines and busy signals. People often pick up the phone and are greeted with silence because the telemarketer is busy with another call. Some people have complained to lawmakers about feeling stalked or harassed because of the abandoned calls.<<
I love that silence - if I don’t hear you talking in 2 seconds, I hang up.
Get this…There’s a telemarketing company out there that uses a machine that dials until it gets an answering machine and then leaves audio ads on your machine. If it dials and gets a live person, it is programmed to hang up and try again later.
I’ve got them both beat! I have an answering machine with no outgoing message to be detected by computers. You call, the phone rings, picks up… beep. Telemarketers just get confused and either hang up or helpessly say “Uhh… hello?” a few times before they hang up while I giggle at them from the living room. In my view, if I want to talk to you, you already know I have no message. If you don’t know me well enough to know that, I don’t care about you and you can flounder about confused and trying to figure out if you just called an answering machine, a pager, a phone glitch or what.
I’m getting less and less telemarketer calls. I expect that I’m being put onto a lot of “bad number” lists with my machine.