Another thread on this board reminded me of a question I have about caller I.D. and telemarketers.
How come I never get a “Nasty Telemarketer” message, or something similar, come up on my caller I.D. box when these guys call? All I ever get is an “Unavailable” or “Out of Area” message.
Why? What makes it “Unavailable”? Can’t the telephone company figure it out?
The sinister side of me thinks the telephone companies of the world have worked out secret deals with the telemarketers of the world that make their names obscure and/or anonymous.
But I also have people I actually want to talk to show up as “Unavailable” too.
Is it evil shenanigans? Back room deals?
Even if the call is coming out of a bank of phone lines, shouldn’t the main lines name and/or number show up? I mean, the telephone company knows where and who to direct the bill for that call, right?
Not all equipment can transmit the caller ID signal yet. This will change as time goes on. And when it does, it may not be the panacea that think. I got a call once that showed “Montgomery Cnty” in my caller id. I answered it because I thount is was the county calling me for some odd reason. Instead it was Montgomery County Lamp Shades or something.
You have to love the ingenuity of the telephone companies. First they supply a service people would want - caller ID. The they supply ‘caller-id blocks’ to telemarketers (for a fee) then go back to residential and offer ‘caller-id blocks’ blocker (for a fee). I imagine they will go back to telemarketers with something to get around that but there is a limit to how much they can milk it.
Never underestimate the ingenuity of people. They will find a way around the screener. I imagine they will take of their caller-id blockers (the ones that say unavailable) and transmit something that will disguise who they are and make people want to pick up out of curiousity. The Montgomery Cnty is a good example of what’s coming.
My brother used to work in marketing at one of the Baby Bells. One of his jobs was to try to sell caller ID to the phone subscribers. Another job was to sell phone lists of prospective buyers to telemarketers.
In NYS you can block your # from caller id (CID) for free but the CID subscriber can automatically reject all private numbers (they go to intercept saying to complete the call you must allow your # to be displayed). actually both those services are free.
Unavailable # are diffrent from private - and mainly fall into 2 )er 3) catagories:
1 equpiment does not work with CID
2 the number they are calling you from does not have an actual telephone number associated with it (basically outgoing service only)
Now there is a new service that blocks all private and unavailable # and sends them to a message stating your call will not go through but you can leave a message with your number so the CID subscriber can decide if he wants to call you back - that’s a pay service though.
If the call originates from a BPX then that private exchange may not give out the caller ID. I know that is the case on some of the calls I receive on my cell-phone, including from the company I work for . They are not a telemarketing company It is just a characteristic of the PBX.
Since telemarketing companies don’t typically have evil-sounding names, the blocking probably isn’t intentional (or at least intended to deceive) most of the time - for everyone who reads the caller ID box and ignores calls from companies with names like “DCI”, there’s someone else who ignores unavailable/private calls, either manually or automatically.
Intentionally blocking caller ID just wouldn’t help the bottom line, which is what telemarketers care about. Old equipment and digital lines are more likely causes.
When I switched my local long-distance from PacBell to MCI, getting wardialer-spammed by SBC - the parent company of Pacific Bell. (The wardialer apparently had a bug: it wouldn’t forward the call to a telemarketer when I answered, and it would retry 8 times. I had to get the police involved to get it to stop.) All the calls came through as “Unavailable.”
Now how the hell can that be? Don’t tell me that SBC in Dallas doesn’t have the proper equipment. The only conclusion is that they took deliberate steps to hide their identity.
I do know that there are two levels of caller identificaion, one being Caller ID, and the other is named ANI (automatic number identification, iirc). I’ve been told that a subscriber can block his outgoing Caller ID, but the only thing that can block ANI is a reroute by an operator, or calling to or from a third-world country with a backwater phone system.
Any more than this I don’t know, but would be interested to learn.
[STANDARD DISCLAIMER]
I am not a tele-marketer.
[/STANDARD DISCLAIMER]
I manage an outbound Marketing Research Call Center. When we call people to ask them to participate in Taste Tests, Focus Groups, etc, their Caller ID says, “Unavailable.”
It didn’t used to, but when I expanded the Call Center, we upgraded our phone lines to what the TelCo calls “SuperTrunks.” Basically, SuperTrunks are T1 lines (bundles of 24 telephone lines) without some of the fancier digital gizmos.
One of those gizmos unavailable on a SuperTrunk is the ability to send CallerID Information.
This is ironic, becuase I want people to know it’s us when we call; we invested a lot of years, dollars and efforts into making a good name for ourselves in the community, and our brand name is an asset. Many of our respondents tell us, “Oh, if I had known it was you calling, I would have answered before the machine picked up.”
Anyway, to answer the question, in many older communities, the TelCo simply can’t provide Caller ID information capabilities at a reasonable price.
I think we’ve stumbled upon a system that works, based on what appears to corroborate k2dave’s breakdown.
All our incoming calls either show 1. a name & number, or 2. “private name/private number”, or 3. “unknown name/unknown number”. Invariably, type 3 are telemarketers (one exception: my daughter’s calls from her dorm room). A further tip-off: after answering, with telemarketers there always seems to be a pause of 1 second or so, before they begin their spiel.
So if CID says unknown, and no one starts talking within 1 second of pickup, we just hang up.
This is my first post, thought I would put my $.02 in.
I work for a Wireless communications company. Our outbound service is with many T-1’s. When you dial a number that has caller-id, it comes up as unavailable. I’ve always been told that it is because there is not one number assigned to the line.
(Sorry to come back to this, but I wanted to comment way after the fact.)
Absolutely. The thing is, just how far are they willing to take this? From the looks of it, they’re willing to take it pretty far.
Thanks to those that offered sensible reasons as to why they don’t always pop up… And a hearty howdy to the new poster (Hey, this was your first post. I can’t let your first post be the one that killed the thread.)
If you are paying for the call (usually the caller making a regular call) you don’t have to have your number identified - you are creating the transaction, so you can block your number if you choose.
If you dial a toll free number, you can’t block your call - it’s “not your dime”, so companies get the caller ID via ANI (Automatic Number Identification).
Yes, Many phone systems have multiple extensions, so they are frequently reported as all comming from the one registered number. Some PBXs don’t relay the number.
:)>>>Oh, by the way, when you dial a toll free number, even when it’s with the companies you do business with regularly, like your bank, or credit card company, your number is stored in an ANI learning database that can be used later to market calls TO you, and it also “marks” you as a viable consumer.
And then trends are spotted, like frequency and type of call. Call your credit card company about late charges alot and some other company will harass you by phone offering some screwball deal. Much of this is built upon your caller ID (ANI).
Say you tend to call your credit company alot…well then you are marked and your number is sold and your number is reverese-connected to your address and your address is sold to others.
I love this country.