Yep, good ol’ Verizon. They haven’t put much money into infrastructure around here. I also get by on my 1.5 megabit DSL, best internet I can get from Verizon since I live in a rural area.
Screen. Rarely answer if I don’t recognize the caller, although it’s not a strict rule. Caller ID is the best invention since the wheel.
I generally don’t screen my calls, but I will look at the CID and judge from there.
I’ve been getting peppered with telemarketers lately so I’m being more diligent, but I’m also balls deep in a hugely unsuccessful job hunting campaign, so I’ll pick up a lot on the false hope it’s a job I applied to
I hate telemarketers so much that I’d skip owning land lines or cell phones if I could. But my employer issues a tether to me since my job has me on-call 24/7 for technical support matters.
One of the things I liked with my old BlackBerry (aside from the button keyboard) was that I could put a custom ring on each of my contacts and I also had a filter for e-mail that would trigger different LOUD ringtones when certain subject lines (e.g. “Server Room A/C Malfunction”) appeared from certain senders (e.g. Enviro-Monitor). So I got creative and pulled sound-bites out of my favorite music and assigned ringtones to family, friends, coworkers, and a few medical providers. Then I started adding the telemarketers’ numbers to contacts (Outlook allows 17 per contact) and giving them silent ringtones. That meant I never even had to look at my phone to know who was calling; I could just screen them by ear! 
Unknown callers were probably advertisers, so I set my default ring to the sound of a cash register and I could ignore them, as well.
Back in the 1990’s I started playing around with the robo-callers on the land-line I had. It seemed like they waited for a two-syllable noise (“Hello?” “Hola!” “Shalom!” “Ya Man!?”) after the ring stopped, then they would start their friendly pitch… So I got in the habit of answering my phone in other foreign languages (e.g. “Moshi-Moshi!” “Aloha!” “Ya sprocitye!”) and finally settled on a nice phrase that was even in English: “This is ____ speaking.”) and found that those greetings left the telemarketing systems confused. Real people had a habit of just rolling with my odd sense of humor and launching into their call*. Robo-callers and auto-dialers seemed to hang in confusion while waiting for something familiar (like a two-syllable phrase it recognized) and so I knew to just hang up after a full second of dead silence.
Now my employer has forced me to upgrade to an Android phone.+ Aside from the touchscreen keyboard, it irritates me that the software that lets me filter e-mails and set custom ringtones on certain subjects and senders doesn’t let me assign custom ringtones to individual contacts. So now, when the default cash-register ringtone tells me there’s a call coming in, I have to actually look at the screen and/or resort to my weird phone greetings.
–G!
*But then I put that at the start of my answering machine’s outgoing message: “This is _____ speaking.” pause for three seconds “Actually, this isn’t ____ it’s just his answering machine. He’s busy elsewhere right now and left me to deal with the telephone so leave a message at the–” <BEEP>
It used to annoy the #=!! out of my friends because they’d would launch into their call just before being told it wasn’t really me.
+The built-in flashlight has been astoundingly useful ever since it was issued.:smack:
Just this morning, I canceled an incoming call, and it rang back immediately afterwards, so I answered. The guy said “This is Rick. I just got a call from this number.”
So, not only did he not screen, but he felt compelled to return a call from a number he didn’t know. On top of that, I didn’t call him, which makes me wonder if someone somewhere is spoofing my number.
Sometimes, I hate phones.
Used to drive me nuts at work when you’d call someone, leave them a message, and they’d call back without having listened to the message which basically answered their question.
It also bugs me when I answer the phone and no one is there. You called me, I answered, this is the part where you’re supposed to start talking.
We screen, and the answering machine on the landline announces the caller so we don’t even have to get off the sofa.
It’s not foolproof, though.
There’s a telemarketer that spoofs my area code and local exchange. I was caught by that twice; each time those bastards call, the last four digits change. But since there is only one person in my exchange whom I talk to on the phone, I won’t answer unless it’s her. Of course, the spoofer never leaves a message.
Ooh, wouldn’t that be wicked if a telemarketer spoofed the last number it dialed? Like, if they called me, then they called you but spoofed my number? Especially if they only spoofed the numbers that hung up on them or didn’t result in a sale.
I sometimes answer unknown numbers, depends on my mood. We have had several callers that would keep calling until you answered. Just pickup and set down usually stopped that. With the elections coming next year, that is the only way to keep my voice mail clean. Our server does not have an option to skip to the next call. We have to listen to the whole thing before deleting.
When I first got an answering machine a generation ago, I put the first few bars of ELO’s “Telephone Line” before my greeting. Really messes up robocalls and first time callers.
A few years back I was coaching a youth ball team. One of the first practices, a player got knocked out cold and was out for a few minutes. He had had a head injury a few years before so we called EMT’s. His mom was about 10 minutes away. She did not answer unknown numbers and had not gotten around to putting the coaches numbers in her contacts yet. She had to pay out of pocket for a 30 mile ambulance ride for her son because of that oversight. Over the years we have had several kids sit late, lay around sick, or not have equipment for the same reason.
I got a call from myself once.
Yeah, the spoof said the same number it was dialling. Normally I’d glance at the number and think “no way, I’m not calling myself” but caller ID flashed up with my husband’s name, so I answered it.
Another time, the caller ID claimed to be from the county’s emergency notification number.
Back to the OP: Of course I do. Who wouldn’t???
If it’s a truly unknown number I’ll sometimes answer, and sometimes ignore it. If it’s a local area code I’ll usually answer. If it’s a scammer in any event, I’ve got a contact named “Telemarketers” where calls go directly to voicemail. It’s got 30-40 numbers associated to it.
My wife and daughters, my mother-in-law, the girls’ high school, and one friend are in the address book of my phone. If I open the phone and see a name on the display, I answer. If all I see is the caller’s phone number, I don’t. If they leave a message, I may get around to listening to it sometime in the next few days.
I don’t.
Well, let me elaborate:
Mobile: I’ll look at the screen before answering. If it’s someone I know I don’t want to speak to, I’ll ignore it or kill it. If it’s an unknown/withheld number, I’ll answer it.
Landline: I don’t have caller ID on my home phone, so I just pick up. Unless I’m busy or can’t be bothered, in which case I’ll ignore it.
It’s my damn phone, I’m not going to let any random telemarketers/scammers define how I use it. Neither am I going to sit there next to a ringing phone waiting for them to give up just because I don’t know who it might be.
If it turns out to be a telesales call, I’ll just hang up on them. No fuss, no bother, no games. If they call back again, I’ll tell them to piss off and then hang up on them again.
That happened to me the other day, except I wasn’t home and it came up as a missed call. Looked at the number and it was my own. Weird.
As for screening calls, I only do two numbers and they are posted on the wall. They are from a bill collector that’s chasing me for a parking ticket from about 7 or 8 years ago. They must be desperate.
That’s happened to me a couple times. I didn’t recognise the number; my wife asked where the call was coming from, and when I read off the number she told me it was my own.
On my home phone, pressing the red “hangup” button while it’s ringing will silence the ringer and send them along to voice mail. No reason for me to listen to a ringing phone. Essentially the same way I’d handle an unwanted call on my cell.
Not really. But I’m not terribly mindful of my phone so I end up missing calls anyway, and if I get a missed call and no voicemail from a number I don’t recognize I’ll just ignore it.
Maybe I’m lucky, but I don’t really get unsolicited calls from telemarketers, survey takers or whatever. Once every 2 months maybe, if that. Does everyone else get these calls all the time?
Probably once or twice a night. Not so much people selling storm windows or family portraits but more along the lines of soliciting donations, surveys and political messages. Oh, and the straight up scam calls (“Microsoft” support, Jane from Account Services about my credit cards, etc).
I don’t answer unknown numbers and if they keep calling without a leaving a message I blacklist them and never hear them again. I also don’t answer the phone even if I know the caller if I don’t feel like talking at the time. There have been occasions where this has caused friction with people who seem to believe that if I own a phone I must answer every call I get. Often I’m happy to exchange quick texts but have no desire to hear a blow by blow account of someone’s latest dramas, I pretty much always hang up if I am talking with people in real life regardless of the circumstances. If I was talking to a shop assistant I wouldn’t stop to answer my phone, I’d just swipe a hangup.
The telemarketers seem to be using local area codes lately. Still don’t answer, since it can go to voice mail.
We have voice caller id - the phone reads out the number or identity of the person calling (sometimes badly.) That’s even better, since when calls come at dinner we don’t even have to get up to check it.