[Aside] I absolutely understand not listening to voicemails if you know who’s calling and you know that you don’t want to talk to them. No argument there. Personally, I HATE taking in the phone and would much rather get an email or a text.
But when the voicemail comes right after an unfamiliar phone number-- I don’t understand not listening to those. It could be something not just important, but life-and-death. Maybe if you’re a kid, you think everyone in your life is immortal. I dunno.
I usually do not answer phone calls from unfamiliar numbers, but if they come with a voicemail, I do listen to those.
Last week my mother fell and went to the ER. A neighbor called when I was not available and left a voicemail. Unfamiliar number. What if a stranger finds your lost dog, or a friend gets stuck and needs to borrow someone’s phone?
You’re saying that no important information can ever come to you from a phone number you don’t recognize. Makes. No. Sense. [/Aside]
NOTE THIS: I’m not referring to TALKING on the phone. I’m not suggesting you call anyone or talk to anyone.
I’m asking about LISTENING to a voicemail. That’s all. Just listening to see if it’s something important.
I’m referring to a situation where you see a missed call from a number you don’t know and there is a voicemail from that number. You’re saying you would never listen to that VM?
I’m not suggesting you call anyone…just listen. I didn’t call the neighbor back when i got the voicemail…I called the hospital and located my mother in the ER.
I guess at my age, I pretty often have people go to the hospital, have operations, and even die (although those people don’t call me after the fact…). I get calls from time to time containing life-and-death information from numbers I don’t recognize. I had a missed call from an unfamiliar number. I listened to the VM and it was my aunt telling me my uncle had committed suicide. <shrug> Maybe it IS an age thing. In your life, “chances are it’s nothing serious,” whereas in my life I can pretty well guarantee it’s serious. If someone I don’t know calls me and leaves a message, it’s usually pretty serious.
And sometimes the messages are important but not life-and-death. We had a big hailstorm here last week and I filed a claim with my insurance company. Got a VM from a number I didn’t recognize–it was the adjustor wanting to meet me at the house. Deleting that without listening would have been dumb, especially since I DON’T answer calls from unfamiliar numbers. If someone has something important to tell me they HAVE to leave a message. In my outgoing message, I say, “If this is a business call or I don’t know you, please leave your name and number and tell me why you’re calling.”
I truly don’t mean to be a pain about this, but I reallyreally want to understand the thinking behind this.
3+ yrs doing tech support and I never ever want to be on a phone again. Every time it rings I want to hide under a desk and cry. So I’m probably damaged goods when it comes to phones and calls. Not to mention my voice mail box is completely full since I never check it, so if anyone gets bumped to vm, they are out of luck anyway. If I’m really curious who may have called me, I might text them back. But if it is truly an emergency I need to know about, people know to text me. Or call my wife, who will text me.
I should also add, even to “just listen” requires I stop whatever I’m doing, turn down the stereo/movie, or go find a quiet place to hear. Then usually it is nobody worth talking to, or they mumble, or ramble. I don’t have time for that nonsense when there is music to blast and movie to watch and yapping dogs to pet.
Ok. Thanks. Texting someone back if you’re really curious works, if they’re calling from a cell phone.
I do understand the hatred for the phone.
I would love to turn mine off, but alas, there are people who need to talk to me. After my mother fell, her doctor assigned a whole flotilla of caregivers-- nurse, physical therapist, social worker-- and they’ve ALL been calling me from their unfamiliar numbers (which I immediately save). My mother already has two care managers and a home care worker, and I don’t think there’s room for any more cooks in the kitchen…but whatever. My mother (who’s 91 and lives 1,000 miles away) is my only family, so there are no siblings, children, grandchildren, spouse or boyfriend to take any of the calls or any of the slack. It’s all on me all the time…me and the people I pay who have to get direction from me. [/rant]
I am old school, in that I still use the same email app I’ve had since I first went on the internet*. Even though it hasn’t updated in over 10 years, it still works, and I like it. This app will open up my spam folder when there’s a new one filtered to it, where I will check to see if it’s genuinely spam or been misfiled. I also have an automatic deletion set for three days after it goes in there. So far I have had no mistaken deletions using this method.
My ISP is really good at filtering spam before it even reaches me, so I barely get any anyway.
I do not have a webmail service anymore. After Hotmail was considered gauche, while Gmail was considered cool, I decided nothing made sense anymore and stayed away entirely. So far I’ve had no regrets, just more confusion.
*I fear upgrading to Win10 will cause my faithful steadily working apps to fail.
I check and delete the 20 or so spam emails that accumulate daily. I used to find an occasional real email in the bunch, but assuming Trish isn’t really a hot neighbor who wants to fuck, Yahoo has gotten better.
Check my spam folder? I never even check my inbox unless I’m expecting a particular email (usually to “validate” a website sign up, or because I placed some sort of online order). Only time I check spam is if something I’m expecting for the inbox that I’m actually checking for once is taking really long to show up.
Hotmail has a Junk folder instead of Spam, and it always indicates with a number how many messages are in there. So I always know if something shows up there.
I have two layers of spam filters: server-side (they maintain a blacklist of some sort) and within my local email client. My local email client has severe spam filters with some senders affirmatively filtered IN but generic folks who email me are only going straight into my inbox if
• they don’t send HTML email
• they don’t include any http links
• they don’t include any of a huge batch of words or phrases I’ve pegged as in use by recurrent spammers
• they aren’t from a domain or address that’s on my own blacklist
In practice it means that the Trash folder is the final destination of most email of folks not on my address book. I never empty it without looking at it first, and it is sorted and color-coded according to exactly which spam-rules dumped it there. I check both subject and sender name for anything that might be legitimate. Sometimes I even open them to make sure it’s junk.
Any mail from anyone not already in my approved list goes into my bulk mail folder automatically. Therefore, if I am expecting an email from someone whose email addr I don’t know, I know I have to check there or miss it. Sad, but true.
Order confirmations, for example. The often come from a different department in the shipping company and I won’t know what the addr is in advance, so I can’t put it in my allowed list.
Much the same as Musicat. Once in a while I am expecting an email from someone whose email address isn’t on my contacts. I go to my spam folder and delete everything in it. Later it is a simple matter to find the email I want. Other than this I never look at it.