My ex-husband has been calling the house since just before 1 am. It is now 4 am. He has called at least eight times, leaving messages the first two times. He wants to talk to my son (according to the messages) and my son isn’t here, so I’m not answering. I’m pretending to be asleep (that’s the story I’ll give when I talk to him tomorrow, though I really should go with “spent the night at my boyfrined’s” just to rile him up).
But even though he has called at least eight to ten times (I lost count), my Caller ID shows him as only having called three times. Everytime he called, it showed up on the screen, but in the history it only lists three times. So I thought perhaps it only list the times he actually left messages. But he only left two messages.
So my question is, does Caller ID only track calls that make it through to the voicemail message? I can see him hanging up before the message starts and just screwing up the timing once, resulting in three logged calls. I was under the assumption that Caller ID would log every call that rings, not just those that connect. Have I been laboring under a false pretense? Am I sleep deprived right now?
Now the fun thing will be playing back the saved message for my son to hear. I have no problem listening to my messages the first time, but haven’t figured out the codes to retrieve a saved message…I usually wait the 30 days fr it to come up again for deletion. Now if my work phone and the home phone would use the same codes to save and erase and all that, my life would be so much easier and I wouldn’t have to search for the manual.
Oh, and there is call number eleven. Maybe I’ll just tell him the ringer was turned off because I’m sick and needed to sleep…which I’m apparently not doing…
I think different Caller ID displays / phones keep track of things differently.
I am trying to think of how to explain how ours works but I can’t because it’s 4 in the morning and my brain is dead.
Consecutive calls from the same number (meaning no-one else called in between) are counted/tracked differently on my current phone. Similar to what you have described.
I think it depends on your phone. I have two different brands of phones, one a Panasonic and one an AT&T and the read-out records them differently.
The Panasonic shows it as 'Jane Smith 410-555-1234 x3" if someone has called three times.
The AT&T just shows a little checkmark by the number if someone calls more than once in a row, otherwise it records each call marked with the time.
Your ex-husband is trying to call your son at 4AM? How old is your son? Is the call an emergency?
If your son is young and it’s not an emergency, I’d simply ask why in the world he was calling so late and why he expected anyone to answer the phone at 1AM.
My caller ID will sometimes not show second missed calls from the same person back to back. It could be that, if he is calling several times in a row without waiting a bit.
Don’t have much input on the Caller ID thing (luddites that we are, we don’t even have it), but I wanted to say Amen, Sistah to this. My work phone, cell phone, and home phone all use different codes, and I am forever using the wrong ones.
Perhaps it has some kind of “whoops, wrong number” avoidance, where it won’t show the number until X number of rings have happened or a certain amount of time has passed since the phone started ringing - that way people who realize they’ve dialed wrong won’t be as likely to get the “who called from this number?!” call-backs from psycho caller-ID monitors.
Caller ID information is sent prior to the ring from the phone company. Not sure if it is sent prior to each ring, or just once prior to the first ring. Your CID display can do what it wants with the information it was provided. To really be able to answer we would need to know what model of CID you have.
Depending how bad the screen on your CID is, it may be showing all of them, but you can’t easily recognize it. On one of our phones, the “count” is tiny, so I usually just look at the time/date stamp. But since the screen is fading, 01:10 and 01:18 are liable to appear to be the same if I do not take the time to look at each one carefully.
Seriously. The dude was calling you and yours in the middle of the f’ing AM. WTF??? Like there was something that your son could have done about some job offer at 3:00 AM. What a drunk a$$.
I have experience in the cellular world, so this might not apply, but if this dude harasses you about something else really early in the AM and you really want to know, your customer service should log the calls. If you really care, that is…
I used to have an ex-H like that. He would never call during the daytime-- only after he’d tied one on and was feeling guilty. I hate calls in the middle of the night. If you were comfortable that your son was safe, pull the connection plug out of the phone or turn it off!! You are not obligated to take ANY calls from him or anyone else in the middle of the night. And you do not need to provide him with an explanation the next day why you didn’t answer the phone in the middle of the night! If your son had been at home, you would not have waked him to take the phone call, would you? But if he had been home, both of you would be unable to sleep. Your ex is a jerk.
I don’t know about called ID, but I do know harassment and I know about ex-jerks. You do not have to put up with this crap.
Actually, it’s between the first and the second ring. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID . That’s why your phone rings first and then you see the caller id info.
The only answer to the OP is “it depends”; as others have mentioned, different display devices remember differently. Some show calls individually, some show a call with a count, some show just the last time a given number called.
Thanks for the input. The only reason I really wanted to know was so I could say to him, “why the F*** did you call me 13 times this morning after leaving a message the first time?”
I considered unplugging the phone, or turning off the ringer, but my son was over at a friend’s house with the car, and I like to be available for those calls from the police or the “I hit something” call. And yes, the ex only calls when he is tanked. Last week he called at 2 am to ask if he could come home, and then the lesbian whose house he lives in grabbed the phone and asked if I had a garage he could sleep in, because she was kicking him out. The answer to both of them was “No!” and I hadn’t heard a peep from him since. We’ve been divorced for ten years now, he’s been married and divorced since then, but I’m the one he still calls when he’s loaded. Or he’ll call and ask his son to come over at 3 am. But if his son calls him and needs him? “Call me tomorrow”. Piece of work, that one.
I can relate. Since you have a teenager, I suggest you get a cell phone for you and your son and *do not * tell the ex the number. You’ll have the peace of mind knowing your son can reach you at any time, and ex can get a busy signal all freaking night long.
