I’d say 5 or 6 times for me. If you don’t answer, you’re either not there, or not available. We have a phone in another department close by. It will ring well over 15 times sometimes. Why do people think that if they keep letting it ring, someone will pick up?
And before you ask, no, there is no voicemail setup on the phone. But still, I’m able to grasp your availability in 5 or 6 rings. Not 20 or more.
You?
I can’t remember the last time I called a number that didn’t have an answering machine or voice mail. But I’ll say 10 rings.
A business that wouldn’t answer during when they are open I will let ring until their system dies. I will call up again until their system dies. After a good ten minutes and no answer I write corporate an email telling them their number on the web site is wrong and to correct it or explain why nobody answers.
An older person that takes forever and I know it gets 10 to 15 rings because some people do take that long.
Normal calls get up to 6.
Ditto. In fact, if the phone rings more than four times I am surprised.
It depends whom I’m calling. For business calls, probably only 3-4. For most private calls: 6-7 rings. If I’m ringing elderly people, or those whose phone I know happens to be quite separate from the living part of the house, I’ll wait a lot longer, perhaps 15 rings or so.
With no answering machine… 10.
I vaguely recall being told that was a good number when I was a kid, though I tend to stop at 6 rather than listen to it ring off the hook.
Business, I’ll ring back a few minutes later thinking they are away from their desk.
What is it with people who let it ring like that? Obviously no one is going to answer after 20 rings except to be pissed off and demand to know why the hell you are calling them. I had one guy wake me up from a dead sleep (I worked nights, and had school for the mornings) while trying to get hold of my roomie (who worked days). The urgent reason he called 8 times in a row?
He wanted to smoke dope with said roomie.
There was a PSA when I was a kid that said to let it ring 10 times. It showed an old person with a walker moving slowly toward the ringing phone.
I let it go for 10 rings, both because of that and because some answering machines will turn on after 10 rings if they’re off. If I’m dialing from a phone with a readout of the time, I wait a minute.
When I was a kid, most houses only had one phone, there were no cordless phones and there was no caller ID or answering machines. If you missed a call, there was no way to find out who had called.
I remember my mother getting frustrated when she’d get to the phone and pick it up and nobody was there. “How can someone call and only let the phone ring eight times!”
I recall in my youth, before answering machines, being told that 10 was a minimum and anything less was rude.
I know that my answering machine, when I had one, would automatically engage at 15 rings, if it wasn’t already turned on. So I have been known to let phones ring for that long to this day if I know that the person I’m calling has an answering machine, or has had one, in the past.
But these days everyone I know has voicemail, and it kicks in after no more than six rings. At my house, it’s four.
Businesses on the other hand I will let ring until I get an answer or I’m satisfied that no one ever will answer. If that’s fifty rings, so be it.
I hope none of you under-6 people are calling landlines in private homes
A couple of years ago we were living in a college flat (ex-lecturer accomodation), and the home phone was in the PABX system. Most of the other phones belonged to offices, and the system was set up so that the voicemail kicked in after 6 rings.
Drove. Me. Mental.
If I was home and a) had nothing in my hands and b) ran like a demented thing, I could usually get it before the voicemail cut in. But who the hell wants to do that?
My rules: 12 for a private house, 6 for an office phone or a mobile. Don’t be so impatient, people. Let the person you’re calling finish their sentence or put down their coffee. We don’t have to jump to it the second Pavlov’s bell goes.
Also, if you want me to call you back leave your number. Not everyone’s phone is going to give them that infomation - my landline doesn’t. “Hi I’m Sue Randompersonyounever met, please ring me back concerning XYZ, bye” is not going to get you anywhere.
Depends on who I’m calling.
My parents used to have a farm and the phone had a system whereby a bell would also go off in the barn, so obviously I needed to give them time to get over to the house, boots off, get inside the house and pick up the phone.
On the other hand, if I’m ringing a business, I expect it to be answered after a couple of rings.
I’ve always done 5, I think I was told that as a kid.
7, for what that little bit of information is worth to the universe.
The reverse can also be annoying.
Sometimes we choose not to answer our phone for whatever reason. If the phone is STILL RINGING 3 minutes later, we’re getting pretty annoyed. Basically, form the caller’s POV, he is exercising one of two options:
There’s nobody there - so why keep the phone ringing so long?
There’s a reason they’re not answering - so don’t keep bloody ringing until you piss them off so much that they HAVE to answer it just to stop the noise.
Sure, occasionally it might be an emergency, and in that situation I’ll be totally fine with it. But it never is.
Somewhere around 4-6 rings if I’m calling someone at home or on a cell phone. Normally by then the answering machine or voice mail has picked up. If voice mail does not pick up, I guess I let it go a little longer, but I don’t think I ever get up to 10.
I let it ring until voicemail or answering machine kicks in, or ten rings. I miss a lot of calls because we don’t always have phones plugged in on every floor, and I don’t go around clutching my cell phone. And if I’m in the middle of a conversation or wrastlin’ a chicken, it takes time to politely excuse myself and wash my hands.
There are always going to be reasons why people cannot answer the phone at certain times. If I am with a customer, I am going to ignore any ringing phone to concentrate on that customer, he/she deserves no less.
In my opinion, only a complete asshole will let the phone ring for 50/60/70 rings, and my response will be to respond with a similar level of stubborness. I will let it continue to ring even when I come free, or I will answer with the intention of helping you not one little bit.
But hey, anybody who wants to annoy the piss out of the person you are trying to reach, just keep on ringing.
Assuming there is no voice mail or answering machine, I’ll let it go for five rings, ten if it’s really important. I gave my grandparents ten rings, as I would with anyone I knew was elderly and/or could not get to the phone quickly.
Decades ago, the phone company suggested 10. But most people didn’t have any extension phones and the phone was typically in the kitchen or hall. If you were upstairs, say, you certainly needed 10 rings to get to it. (If you were in the bathtub, forget it.) Since then everything is different and I rarely wait that long and usually the phone is answered by 4 by some kind of messaging system. Still I have two friends with no messaging system and for them I will wait 10.
Incidentally, visiting Swiss friends a dozen years ago, I discovered that extension phones were illegal (privacy issues were the official excuse) and they had their phone on the steps up to the second floor. The PTT was in the throes of privatization and perhaps that has changed since.