Any specific recommendations for answering machines or landline phones which block calls?
Don’t overthink it.
Whatever they do it’ll have to work on a landline.
I don’t think there are answering machines for cell phones, because they all have the m that functionality built in. I think all “answering machines” work with land lines.
Moving the existing phone number to a cell phone might be one way to handle it. Google has somewhat decent spam handling.
My mother would prefer to keep the landline.
From our many threads on this topic I think @puzzlegal nailed it for the OP’s Mom in post 13. Works on landlines, nothing new to learn how to use, simple from the end user, etc.
First mistake: expecting Bell Canada to do anything that benefits their customers. Their corporate cultural is to operate as though they still had a monopoly. I was able to change companies and keep my number. Even after 25 years, I still get a letter from them every month like clockwork asking me to come back. But never showing any interest in knowing why I left.
I get those “nobody there” calls a lot, too. What’s up with that? I mean, you called me, so start talking. The worst offenders on actual calls are the Medicare Advantage Plan calls. Just when I think they’ve got the “I’m not interested” message, a new batch starts up. That and the “Final Expense”. Effin’ ghouls.
What type of answering machine do you use? And who offers this free service you speak of? Is it an app, or something valid only in the continental US of A? Canada has a “do not call” thing which works as well as you might guess.
Looking it up, it offers free landline service for voips but seems to want an American.carrier. It looks very helpful otherwise.
That part isn’t (necessarily) evil or stupid. Just not set up for your advantage. Set up for their advantage.
Their goal is to keep every one of their workers talking nonstop. Making a useless call costs them exactly $0.00. Put that together, and it’s profitable for them to place calls even if they can’t talk right now.
In more detail …
So they use a software tool called a predictive dialer. They have a hundred or however many workers making sales calls. But the workers don’t dial the calls. The computer guesses when each worker will be done talking and dials a dozen numbers at once for each worker who’s predicted to be almost ready in a few seconds. Only a couple of those calls will be answered by live potential customers. Then the computer scrambles to connect those few live calls to the workers who’ve just become available. If they’re doing it perfectly, each worker gets a live caller immediately.
But they’d much rather hang up in silence on 10 potential customers who answered the phone than let a single agent sit there with nobody to talk to for more than a couple seconds.
So they over-dial, and we ordinary folks see that as incoming calls that end in silence and a hang-up. Don’t worry, they know you answered and you’ll be prioritized for another call soon. For sure after just 2 or 3 abandoned calls at their end you’ll have the extravagant privilege of being able to listen to a sales agent try to sell you vinyl siding or car insurance or a Medicare plan …
My answering machine is a Panasonic, but it’s really old. I’d be really shocked if this model is still being made.
Honestly, i have to think the market for answering machines is much smaller than when i last bought one, and it might be harder to get a good one.
Nomorobo may be a US thing, and i forget who sponsors it. I was surprised it existed, and researched it because i assumed it was a scam. But it’s been great.
A friend of mine (in Ontario) uses some kind of service that allows him to screen out robocalls (by playing a long message that ends in something like “press 2 to connect your call”). I’m pretty sure his landline is a VOIP phone, and I think the screening ability might be something that his VOIP company provides. Sorry for the lack of concrete details.
Of course, that wouldn’t prevent a determined (human) prank caller from getting through.
Some landline phones can be configured to ask a caller to press 1 or # for the call to go through. Look for phones with something like “smart call block” feature. This will block most spam and automated calls while still allowing real people to get through. The service providing the landline may also provide a similar smart call block feature that can be dynamically enabled. Check with the landline company to see if it’s something they offer. However, elderly callers may be confused by the instructions and may not be able to do what’s required, so they would end up being blocked as well.
We get several spam calls a day, all spoofed numbers. The most common are where the number shows our area code, but the identifier says “Out of area call” or something like that, so it’s clearly a spoofed number. Anyway, we only answer calls if we recognize the caller. Also, I find most spam callers hang up after three or four rings, where a real caller would wait for voicemail to pick up.
We have a landline, and we use cordless phones (also a cheap way to get an extension in another room, if that is useful). It announces the call information, either just the phone number if there is no caller name, or just the caller name if it has that (pronunciation of names is horrible, so we often end up going to the phone to see what it says). It also has a built-in answering machine, very programmable. Both the main unit and the satellite units show the caller ID info.
For the OP, that seems to be a lot of work for a prank caller, if all the calls are spoofed with different numbers (or maybe there’s an app for that, I don’t know). In any case, I think your mother’s best bet is an arrangement that allows her to choose which calls to pick up and which ones to ignore. Then she would be depending on a) recognizing the caller from the caller ID, or b) a legitimate caller leaving a message. Pretty much what @puzzlegal described, and like we have.
The fact that there are so many calls in a day, as well as this from the OP:
…suggests that at least some of the calls aren’t scammers, but people making prank calls.
I ported my landline number that I had had for 35 years to a cell phone last year. My landline had no extra features (caller id, call waiting, call forwarding, etc.). Now I can see who is calling and if it’s not a number that is stored in my phone, I swipe down and send it to voice mail. It just so happened that right after I ported the number, my long-lost cousin in Seattle called me. I was so glad that I had just not disconnected the number!
Oh, good point. If she doesn’t have caller id on the number, get it asap! And if she gets a lot of crank calls from the same number, she can probably pursue that (or at least, never pick up that number again.)
My guess is your mom got fed up at one point and gave them a piece of her mind, so someone doing prank calls thinks she’s a fun target. If it’s idiots, not spam, then *57 and reporting it may work. I wouldn’t hold my breath though with our phone companies. Might work better if you mother “thinks” it was an obscene or physically threatening call.
Very few people call me on my land line, and apparently the only anonymous valid one is a health clinic. But, I also get weird calls on my cell. Once in a while it’s a robocall warning in Mandarin (the ultimate in Canadian spam) with what I assume is the standard warning to call back because the Immigration or Chinese police or someone is after me because of paperwork. (apparently the typical scam imed at Chinese immigrants). Considering the only association I have with China is applying for a visitor visa over a decade ago, I have to assume this is just scattershot spam. On the house phone, I have never gotten a voice message from spam. It’s been a long time since I got a call saying the RCMP were coming for me unless I paid… My wife at work says they got the “please pay us this unpaid bill or your power gets shut off this afternoon…”
When I get a weird call, 50-50 whether i decide to answer or just let it ring out. Usually it’s my cell, and it comes in waves maybe 2 a day to one every 2 days, and stops for a few weeks. If I pick up and stay quiet, a real human will go “Hello?” The autodialer simply assumes nobody there and hangs up after 5 or 10 seconds of dead air.
I’d love to be able to answer annoying calls with a fax machine noise.
They even spoof valid local numbers (but not the name). In the early days I got 2 or 3 calls saying “why did you call me?” I guess somehow the phone company blocks that now or they no longer find that productive.
My parents years ago had a feature (in New Jersey) where unrecognized or blocked numbers (like my unlisted number) the machine would answer and ask you to provide you name. It would then ring the phone and they would hear what I said for my name and the option to accept or hang up. You could program familiar numbers to bypass this.
I would be more worried about financial scams - everything from AI saying “Hi mom! I’m in a Mexican jail and need $1,000 for bail immediately” all the way to shady roofing and plumbing companies.
I used to get spam phone calls in Chinese on my office phone number. I don’t know what the scan was, but i was told at the time it was probably something about the IRS.
A few months ago i got repeated calls on my cell phone from a fax machine. I blocked it, so it didn’t ring, but for some reason my phone recorded the “message” anyway. I got about 60 calls from that number (which was probably a legit wrong number being dialed by mistake, not spam) before they gave up.
From what I read when these were common in Canada with a high Chinese immigrant population, they were aimed at recent immigrants warning them that the local immigration or the Chinese police were after them for something (i.e. bad paperwork) and liable to be deported/extradited unless they paid a “penalty fee”. I assume the ones threatening relatives back home were more specifically targeted.
I get a lot of spam calls and texts, whereas my wife gets none on her cell. I assume this is because she got her cellphone when the numbers were mixed in with landlines, whereas mine comes from an exchange specifically allocated to Rogers for cellphones.
Yeah. I suspect two factors.
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As the public learned that spammers often use faked numbers from your area code and first 3 digits to make you think it’s a local call, the public mostly stopped trying to call those faked numbers back.
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As the public learned that, they also learned to not preferentially pick up “local” calls. So the tactic quit working as well for the spammers and has mostly been superceded.
Some technological obstacles are now coming online trying to reduce faked caller ID. But “reduce” is not “eliminate”. Sigh.