Since being retired, I have stopped garbage cell phone calls from ringing and interrupting me by turning on the silencing of unknown callers.
This works . . . until I need to receive a call from somebody I want to hear from who is not in my contacts. Last week, for example, both my wife and I needed to hear from callers not in our contacts, and those calls were important. So we had to turn off that unknown caller feature.
Then came the deluge of junk calls. And when I answered, nobody was there. Infuriating.
This led me to the question about how working people handle these nuisance calls. When I worked I could not silence unknown calls. Those were the calls I wanted, and junk calls were almost non-existent.
Now with junk calls, in some cases, more prevalent than good calls, how do you working people handle this?
(Unsupported editorial comment: I suspect the phone companies make a huge amount of money from these calls, or else they would be stopped.)
The main question, though, is how working people handle these junk calls.
We always have to answer the phone because there’s a smorgasbord of medical offices calling all the time, and if by some miracle someone’s approved a PET scan and the office is trying to schedule, I don’t want to miss it. If I answer and there’s a pause (especially if I can hear a bunch of other people in the background when it clicks over to a person), I hang up and report the number as spam.
I do not answer my phone, ever. This is partially due to my hearing loss which makes it a pain in the ass to use the phone. All my friends know this, and text me instead of calling. If my car is in the shop, my mechanic also knows this and he is cool with texting me.
For the calls that are sent directly to voicemail, I read those messages a couple times a day, deleting 99% of them as I go.
I too need to answer all calls, because I can’t predict the phone number important ones will come from.
I use Google’s call screening and spam blocking feature. It uses a variety of checks, such as my contact list and Google’s own list of verified numbers, to pass calls through immediately. It also uses block lists to drop some calls automatically.
Calls that don’t meet either criteria get to talk to a robot who asks who’s calling, and shows me that information. Then I can decide to answer or decline.
I do not know if Apple has some thing similar, or if the Google call screening can be used on non-Pixel Android phones.
The number of junk calls I receive has greatly decreased since stir/shaken was required for all carriers. It used to come in waves of nothing, then multiple junk calls a day for a week or more. The last few months it has been 1-2 calls per month.
If someone needs to get in touch with me about something important, they’ll leave a message. It’s highly doubtful I’ll miss a critical opportunity by not answering a call immediately.
*there have never been negative repercussions from not answering a call from an entity my phone identifies as “Spam Likely”.
I work in a pharmacy, and I call clients regarding their prescriptions every day from a multi-line business phone. I can’t send them texts. If they don’t answer their phone, they don’t get their medication. And nine times out of ten, their mailbox is full.
While I’m on this tangent, what’s up with full voicemail boxes? Is the internet full? Over 700,000 hours of video per day is uploaded to Youtube. Is it possible that communications giants like Verizon and AT&T neglected to reserve enough gigabytes to take messages?
I have 2 phones and someone monitors another line for me. That way my junk phone I can use with everything block but expressly who I want to use to chat or text with.
Get a second hand phone from a family member. (Everyone has at least a few)Return it to factory settings. Cheap pay as you go plan. No need to smart it up. Just use it for particular people. Use the other for online banking and shopping, Facebook and doctors and such. Deal with the junk every two days or so.
It works for me.
Sometimes I have to block a number on the junk phone. It’s rare
My cell phone does not have a voice mail option, by choice. It’s a holdover from many years ago, when my Mom would fill my mailbox with repeated rambling messages. Out of frustration, I asked Verizon if I could just not have voicemail. Turns out they had a way to do that, and I’ve never looked back.
Other than Mom, the only messages I seemed to get were, “Hey! Call me back.” You know what? I can SEE you called. No need to verbalize that for me. I’ll call you back anyway.
Also, I never have to wade through a list of spam voicemails to delete. They just don’t exist. Plus, I get to weed out businesses I’ll never use again, by catching the ones who say, “Well, I left you a voicemail.” No. No you did not.
Anyway, I’ll stop ranting about voicemail now. Can you tell I hate voicemail?
And, to address our topic here: I pay a couple of dollars a month for Verizon’s call filter. It’s worth it.
I didn’t know that… thx. I’m doing that. I hate voicemail as well.
Funny I generally have call doctors, medical tests and prescription stuff. I don’t think any has ever called me. Hospital stuff maybe. About insurance information.
I don’t know why this is, but I rarely get junk/spam phone calls. I might get two a week. My screen will say (as the call is ringing) “possible spam,” so I don’t answer. If there’s a voicemail, I listen to it.
Why does everyone else get so many spam calls? <scratches head>