Phone rings. I pick it up and say “Hello”. A recorded message says, “The service you have tried to reach is unavailable at this time. Please hold.” Of course, I hung up. What are they doing?
One possibility is that a spammer has you waiting to be spammed. Another is that, by picking up , you have confirmed that a real person is on the other end of that computer generated number and that your number will automatically be placed on a list to be sold, over and over again.
Or both.
Yeah, I just don’t pick up any more unless I recognize the number or the name (caller ID on our phone gives both if available). And I think that has helped. We used to get several spam calls a day, now we’re down to several a week.
I suspect they use an automated dialer that is supposed to connect you to a person when you pick up, but the connection failed somehow (e.g. all the people on their end were on the phone with other people at the time).
For about the last 6-8 weeks, I’ve been receiving about 2 calls a week from the Tax Relief Center or some such BS company, telling me that they can help with the large tax debt I owe the IRS. Of course, I owe no taxes. I don’t answer the phone, so it goes right to voice mail, where I delete the message. But lately, the calls have been going DIRECTLY to voice mail; I don’t even hear the phone ringing. Evidently they’ve figured out a way to bypass me answering the phone?
Mee, too. My messages do NOT sound pre-recorded. The caller’s name is always different. The toll-free call-back number in the message is always different. The caller-ID number is always different, sometimes from a foreign country and sometimes, “0000000000000”. While the words fluctuate, they have the same overall message: “Hi, it’s (female name) calling from the (one of several company names), my phone number is (toll free) and it seems you owe some back taxes. You can now apply to get them eliminated. (blah, blah, blah). It’s a simple process. I’ll keep your account open so you can call back anytime. If you’re no longer interested, please call and press “2” to opt out.” They never mention any name, so I don’t know if they are calling me or if someone else.
What’s more unusual: My phone never rings when they call. I just receive a “ding” after the message has been left.
Yeah, call centres often use autodiallers, and to ensure that their operatives do not enjoy a moment’s unproductive downtime between calls, they set them up so that there is a surplus of available outgoing calls; any unused calls get silently disconnected or put on hold.
This is not good for the recipient of such calls, but the people running the call centre do not care about that, or indeed, care about very much at all, that is good.
Here’s a different kind of phone call. For all I know it is legit, but I am not interested.
Phone rings, pick it up, a recorded announcement says, “This is Royal Bank and it is not a telemarketing call.” Great, what is it, not what isn’t it. It goes on to give the address and phone number for Royal Bank in Montreal and says they really want to talk to me. They ask if I am [Name] and press 1 for yes. I press 1. Then they say they want me to prove it by giving my date of birth. My attitude is that they called me; they should prove who they are. And in any case, I am not giving any personal info when they called me.
Back story. After paying off my Royal Bank visa every month for at least 40 years, I forgot one month and they immediately raised my interest rate (to over 30% IIRC). I got angry and tried to cancel the card. The woman I spoke to to cancel the card insisted on knowing why. I told her, not in so many words, that they were treating my like shit and I had other credit cards that didn’t. In the end I told her (this time in so many words) to commit an anatomic impossibility and hung up. She didn’t cancel it. This was in June and the card expired in Oct. The bank sent a new card that I cut up and threw away. I suspect they want to know why I never activated it.
They called again but I hung up without going through the spiel.
I’ve gotten those calls, though not for a couple of weeks and only on my cell phone; never the landline. Usually, my cell phone rings once and then the call ends. Five or ten minutes later, there’s a voicemail message, like this one (courtesy of the automatic transcription of voicemail messages on my iPhone). Like you, I’m curious how they’re able to bypass the call being answered.
Hey it’s Trevor from the tax restored collective at ###-###-####. I’m calling about your past due filing looking at your file not sure if you still have some past taxes due or missed filing or if you took care of that already give me a call back if you still need assistance and we can help you with one of our many programs under the economic recovery initiative which would make any small or large amounts you may owe noncollectible give me a call back…
I would guess your phone provider has identified this number as a spammer and therefore doesn’t ring your phone.
Possibly, although generally Verizon tells me that a call has come in from ‘Potential Spam’. This notification doesn’t usually happen with these ‘ghost’ voice mails.