I’ve been getting some odd calls here at the Quixote residence for the past few months. Several times a day, someone will call and the caller ID will display “Out of Area.” Assuming it’s probably just another telemarketer, I answer the phone with my standard, “Hello?” I wait about two or three seconds and then click - there’s nobody on the other end. It’s kinda discomforting; I don’t know why anyone would do this. It’s starting to become very aggravating. Have any of you ever experienced anything like this? Any possible explanations?
DonQuixote,
I often get the same type of calls, but mine invariably come up “unavailable” on caller I.D.
My life is so empty that the only people who EVER call my landline are telemarketers. Why do they think I shell out the money for the phone bill every month just for their convenience?
I don’t always hear a “click”, so I answer the phone, wait 3 to 5 seconds, then say, “loser” 'cock sucker" or something similar, and hang up.
I do this because I believe that most if not all of these calls are telemarketers who are just too lazy to pick up the handset to make the call. They dial the number on their little speakerphone, then listen for the “hello?”. Only when they hear an answer do they exert the effort to pick up the receiver. The most annoying thing is that they rarely hear me the first time I say “hello”. I refuse to say it more than once, though.
Click
[sub]Well, SOMEONE had to do it…:D[/sub]
IIRC, the really big telemarketers don’t really do their own dialing, but depend on an automated system to deliver connections as soon as they’re ready. This system, and I wish I knew more about how it worked, basically anticipates (a) how long it will take to get a real live person to answer the phone (vs. an answering machine or nobody at all) and (b) when the next telemarketer will be finished with the last call and ready for another.
The hang-ups are those times when you answer the phone before a telemarketer is ready to talk to you…the auto-dialer hangs up on you.
Going on what ricepad said,
I’ve always understood this: The telemarketing company makes 2 phone calls. One is the preemptive “Is a warm body going to answer the phone?” and the second is “I’m calling the warm body at home.”
Basically, their “War Dialer” calls your phone number. If a human voice picks up, the dialer hangs up and registers your number as re-callable. If your answering machine picks up, the dialer cancels the second call and moves onto another phone number.
I know it sounds crazy and time intensive, but you can hire a lot less telemarketers if the machine dials more numbers and filters out the “non-warm body” numbers for you . . .
Tripler
Give me a War Dialer any day, and I will rule the world . . .
We rarely pick up the phone when it’s an “Unknown Caller.” I know a lot of people won’t/can’t do that because it could be a long distance call from a friend or family member. But we have very few people out of town, and we figure they’d leave a message if we don’t answer.
Tripler, what you said explains a lot of calls that we get. Although sometimes, we would get maybe four hang-ups in a row before someone would finally say something when we picked up. That’s a big part of the reason why we don’t bother picking up the phone on those calls anymore.
Tripler - do you work with this software?
Because otherwise, I’m going to have to disagree with you. My company is a VAR for one of the big vendors of this type of software, and it works basically how ricepad said - an autodialer dials numbers from a big list, usually generated, i.e. it will skip the 555 numbers but call every number in 817-443-???. When a phone is answered, it tries to associate the call with a free telemarketer. This may take several seconds. If the phone number is not a valid number (or is a fax or computer), the number is marked as invalid and stricken from the list. I haven’t heard about the hangup, but I suspect that if there isn’t a salesperson available in a certain amount of time, it frees up the line and marks the number as available, to be called as soon as a marketer is available.
I haven’t heard about software sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a real person and an answering machine and doubt it can be done. They have just really started using voice recognition software, so I can’t see any software being able to differentiate between a person and a recorded voice (heck, sometimes I can’t tell the difference) and there’s not enough standardization in answering machines to go by the beep.
Note that you could probably get your number off the telemarketer’s lists by starting your answering machine message with the tones that are played at the beginning of a wrong number message!
Eh, you’re probably being stalked. Someone’s got a big crush on you, they found out your number, and now you have fallen prey to their neverending wrath.
Zyada, nope. And I humbly stand down my arguement. I’ve always had that wild-assed guess, because I’ve seen a news program not too far back (the name escapes me) about hackers that use this sort of method. They’ve got their modem to dial every number in the book, and if voice answers, then they hangup. However, if a computer “squawks” at 'em, they’ve got a potential lead. And they could tell a fax machine from a computer by the tones in the squawk.
So I’d gotten a few calls where there was nobody on the line when I immediately picked up, but after two or three seconds of saying “Hello! Who is this?” some telemarketer would get on. Of course I’d usually deny them whatever they wanted, and I’d tell them I was a “poor drunk, livin’ in a van, down by the river!!”
Just a wild assed guess. . .
Actually, I would venture to say it can. . .
The human voice carries at a certain frequency, and a computer generated tone is a pretty anoyinngly-screechy tone. You just have to measure the frequency of the noise, and you could make a fair guess . . .
Now if you could scream as high pitched as the computer, I’d be impressed. And in pain . . .
Tripler
But, I yield to someone who actually has a clue. . . 
:whaps head:
Preview, preview, preview!!!
Oops, missed these replies.
Tripler, I admire your candidness! Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying - when I talked about an answering machine, I meant the machine where you recorded yourself saying “Um, like, leave a message and, um, I’ll get back to you, 'k?” The software can tell an auto-answer modem, fax, etc.
Of course, I can’t simulate the computer noise, but all I need to do is record that high pitched tone sequence that you get when you call a wrong number and add it to my phone message. One of these days…
If you have Caller ID you can block those calls for nothing. Just call the phone company, pay $4.75 setup & you won’t get anymore calls like that. That’s what my phone comp in Calif said.
Or you can get call tracing, which costs a lot more.
Also, if you choose the call block feature there is a code I think that its *83 ?? a person can press when they call you to get around the block as some women have a caller ID block & can hit this when they call you & their nbr displays & the call comes through.
Just hire Fran Dreschler to do your message…