Lately about once a week, I get a call on the same one of our business lines. Initially there is no answer, but then the sound of a man coughing and then the line immediately disconnects. It’s the same cough everytime.
What the hell is this?
I also often get calls that hang up the second I answer them. Huh?
Sorry, I didn’t realize that was so annoying. I’ll stop.
Swine flu! Swine flu!
Oh, meant to add, the cough is so much the same everytime that it leads me to believe it’s recorded.
Like I say, the fuck?
Do you have called id? If you do you can have it blocked by the phone company. Sounds like a not particuarly funny practical joke…
I will look into it. Of all the things I remember about this call, the number on the caller ID is not one of them, of course. I should try call return at the very least.
We do get lots of calls for the old owners of the four lines we have. This one, I believe, always comes in on one particular line. It’s just the weirdest thing.
You most definitely should not. I recently got a foreign call on my private cell phone (Which is not listed, by the way.) in the middle of the night that was hung up the moment I answered, and looking up the number showed it to be a pay number costing €20 per minute. Call return is exactly what the insidious bastards are hoping people will do in that situation.
In truth, I was at least hoping I’d get the number. I wouldn’t actually call them back. I have little faith, though, as I’d bet that I’d get “the number cannot be reached” kind of bs.
I don’t know about the coughing part, but I had a friend who worked in telemarketing tell me that the system they used would dial out to several phone numbers for each telemarketer. Logically, one of those calls would get answered before the others, and when that happened the employee would proceed with that one and the rest would just get dumped. So, if you at home are to answer just slightly behind another person getting called, you may get hung up on. Seems like a waste of leads to me but I guess they’ve determined it’s more efficient. Especially if they’re able to call numbers more than once each.
Ah. That makes sense. At home at least, I try not to answer the phone until after three rings. Most telemarketing auto-dialers hang up after three rings.
This is just a WAG, but does the word “cough” bear a resemblance to your business’ name? This sounds like a rather juvenile prank if you are, say, in the coffin business.
If you have caller ID you can try to look the number up on a site like Call Ferret or 800 Notes. I use them to check numbers I find in my caller ID before just blindly calling them back. Often times I have found notes from many others about the same number and its some known telemarketer, phone phishing scam, etc. Or maybe it’s just a local prank caller with a nagging cough… but always worth a look.