I don’t answer the phone for unrecognized numbers. When I bother to check the one of the “whothefuckcalledme” sites, I learn that it’s a dental insurance offer, a “free cruise” which I’ve somehow won, an Art Institute of Somewhere hoping to make me a future alumnus, a sleazebag collection agency (looking for someone who isn’t me), et cetera et cetera. I changed my cell number after months of similar bullshit, and it more or less picked up again unabated. Different scum-suckers maybe, same motif.
So yeah, I wish I had one of those magic smartphones that Dallas mentioned. Probably only works with Sprint.
Well, it is a Verizon phone, and seriously, my wife and I have got no unsolicited calls since we dropped the land line.
Part of this may be that we never updated our phone numbers with the people we normally do business with.
CenturyTel still provides our DSL service, but they don’t have our cell numbers. We do on-line banking with our credit union, who holds our mortgages and car loans, but we haven’t provided the cell phone numbers to them either. Power company, insurance, etc. We simply do not give out our numbers and there has never been an issue.
You know how that when your credit card expires, they tell you that you must call from the home phone number that they have on file? That is complete bullshit, they never verify the number you are calling from. We have not provided them with the cell numbers either. But still the cards are activated.
The companies that you do normal business with, that you have a business relationship with, are exempted from the Do Not Call list. They sell their customer lists to other, related companies within their corporate umbrella, and that is how you get unsolicited calls.
We dropped that land line 3 or 4 years ago, and our cell phones never get unwanted calls. Obviously your experience may vary.
My husband’s workplace doesn’t allow its number to be displayed, it’s a government agency. If you don’t have someone in your life who has such a problem, then having a phone number whitelist is a great solution.
That government, or that agency, may have that policy, but none of the ones local to me do. Thanks goodness, or I’d never answer their calls, which in my business(es), can be desirable and important.
Ring ring ring…
“Hello, we have an urgent message for you, please hold the line for the next available representative,” says the robotic voice.
I wait.
“Uh, hello,” says the surprised voice on the other end. Obviously, there aren’t too many hot lines for him to answer. “I am calling from XX company to inform you that the warranty on your car is about to, or, has already expired.”
To which I always reply, “This is Rod Harder with Wal-Mart, and the phone number you are calling shouldn’t be on your list. It is actually the phone that we have back here in Sporting Goods to call the background checks in for fire arm purchases. The State of Texas pays for this line. How did you get this number?”
To which a different person than the first always replies in a quick and desperate manner, “Oh we are very sorry for this we will get it removed IMMEDIATELY. I don’t know how we called this number,” to which I reply, “Hey man its cool, I just wanted to let you know. My boss is a big asshole and reports these kinds of things.” “Thank you for being so nice with this matter, it won’t happen again.”
It never does, and I never get any of that “It’ll take 72 hours for your number to be out of our system, you may still get calls in that amount of time, blah blah blah, bullshitty bullshit”
I must be the only person in the whole world who wishes he got more of these.
I get about 1 every other month, maybe less. Have a landline and mobile.
Maybe its just because I do get them so rarely, but If i’m not busy or doing something i can multitask I like to have fun with them - for example:
When a guy called up to sell me broadband, I launched into a 20 minute exposition of why I didn’t believe the internet was a real thing (made it up on the spot, basic premise was that whole internet was a pre-installed file on the hard drive of every computer, internet connections were just to spy on you and steal money)
Or the time a guy called up to get me to buy a conservatory - spent a good 10 minutes making sure it would have the right environment to grow triffids in (i’m still sad he didn’t get the reference) then when he went through the ‘lets just take your details’ phase to send a guy round, i started with “5th floor flat”
I can see getting too many would be totally annoying though
My land line has caller ID, but doesn’t ‘announce’ the caller. But it does come up on my TV screen telling me who’s calling so I can decide whether to answer or not. It’s a feature with my Directv. It is used quite frequently, as I’m on the damn ‘do not call’ list but get credit card robocalls all the time (no way to tell them ‘take me off your list!’)
I feel your pain, but you need more vitriol and rage. Try this…
Get one of those compressed air in a can type air horns. Keep it right next to the phone. You can figure out the rest <evil wink>
Sign up for free giveaways. You will get as many phone calls as you ever wished for.
I remember those. Apparently my husband can’t, though. We got married in 77, and got a phone of our own in 79 (we lived in another country for a while, where it was cost-prohibitive to have a phone), so this was way before the DNC list. My husband could NEVER remember to call, let it ring three times, hang up, call back. Neither could his parents or other relatives. Oddly enough, MY side of the family was able to remember this.
Currently, my husband cannot remember to say “Put us on your do not call list.” He can’t remember that he has to use these exact words. I don’t know why. He writes computer programs, he is familiar with the concept of having to say something in the proper format for it to work. So now, I let him leave a message on the answering machine.
We’ve been getting calls from “Air Duct Cleaning” for at least a year now. Rarely the same number twice. Nothing works with these guys. You can swear, threaten, shame, report, etc but they don’t care so we’ve had to take a different approach.
Twice now, we’ve gone ahead and made the appointment with them and confirmed it and when they get to our house, we act like we have no idea what they are talking about. Waste our time assholes? We’re going to waste your time now.
My doctor’s office uses a number that doesn’t come up properly. Often, it says “private caller”, so I find myself answering the phone, not willing to call the office back, suffer through the voice menu, where i end up leaving a message on a machine where someone eventually will retrieve my message, call back, and the cycle can continue.
So, picking up is usually the easiest route to take. However, what truly chaps my ass is that the telemarketers use the auto-dialers that are calling twenty numbers at a time, and when the computer senses that a human answered the phone, switches over to a human. This usually takes a few seconds, and i find myself saying “hello?” a couple of times before realizing :smack: it’s not the doctor, it’s a telemarketer.
I hate the telemarketing concept, but it must work. I would love to know the percentage of sales going to retired or home-bound folks, who love to talk on the phone to the few and far between calls they receive. I just found out my dad, who is hard of hearing, and never answered the phone when I was a kid, now picks up and talks regularly to telemarketers. He literally has nothing better to do. He kept a guy on the phone for over an hour and a half, and never bought anything. He says he never buys anything, but likes to see how long he can keep them on the phone.
I guess there would be some satisfaction in having a telemarketer hang up on ME for a change, but I don’t have that kind of time.
