Very rarely if it is a local number and I have, say, an appointment coming up. But I also don’t take calls from friends and family if I am engaged in something and don’t feel like talking to them. It isn’t an entirely popular attitude though.
I always answer. I get very few spam calls and might change if I did. I was just away for 2 weeks and, in that time, there were four messages. Three were real, two from familiar numbers. That was all for 2 weeks. The only call I got today was from the lobby saying my Times was delivered. It can come anywhere from 9 to noon, so I have arranged that they call from the lobby. With that infrequency, it is hardly worth the effort to try to decide whether to answer.
Based in this thread, how is political polling still a thing? Don’t most of them call people on the phone? If most people don’t answer unfamiliar numbers, polling can’t possibly be reliable.
I find medical offices the worst when following your instructions to leave voicemail or text.
I get it, they’re busy. Don’t want to fiddle with many irregulars.
If they would just give me a number and a time I could arrange to take their call or god forbid, call them directly.
The nurse line is pretty easy to call. The patient portal is user friendly. So that’s a step in the right direction.
Now if my pharmacy would quit with the robo calls, life could be normal.
I don’t answer unknown-numbered caller ID calls. I got 13 calls today while I was out, all from different “out of area” numbers.
I’ve been taking phone “off the hook” while I’m home.
Any tech problems if I do that if I’m out all day (on an A&T land line)?
It’s not about hangups. It’s about putting up with annoyance of spam calls. Especially since answering a spam call marks you as someone who is reachable, and thus increases spam calls.
I get that some of you actually do get legit calls from numbers you don’t recognize. But some of the situations described seem weird. I know the numbers my doctor’s office will use, for instance. And I knew the numbers the school used when that was a thing. I also remembered at least the name of the businesses I’d interacted with that might need to call me, and have the numbers in my phone if they’ve called me before.
The OP that started this was literally about finding even benign phone calls to be unpleasant and expressing (mild) surprise that anyone answers their phone. This is a common trend these days even including people who are actively offended if you call them without texting for permission first.
A couple of different medical clinics in my city use a web-based booking service from Toronto, so even though it’s a call about my appointment, it looks like it’s coming from Central Canada.
Yeah, everyone who is like to be contacted by knows I prefer text messaging and they know I will not answer a phone call. This includes my mechanic. Since they know that about me I don’t feel bad about never answering.
Or, in the case of my father, bored elderly people.
When I’m up there, visiting with them, and the phone rings, he looks at the caller ID, and even if it’s not a number or name he recognizes, he always answers it anyway (and then, pretty much invariably, winds up telling the telemarketer that he isn’t interested).
I’m not sure if it’s that he wants to make sure that he doesn’t miss a legitimate, important call, that he still operates under the old-school assumption that you always answer the phone, or he’s just that bored.
i know the number that I call to reach my doctor’s office - but I don’t know the number of every line in the office. And I definitely don’t know the numbers I get reminder calls from - it seems that someone takes the list of Wednesday appts home with them on Monday so they can call me Tuesday when the office is closed. And I had two government jobs where the caller ID did not show the number the call was actually coming from.
The poll companies generally are good citizens and list their name and purpose on their calls. So those who would actually be okay with answering a poll can pick up the phone.
I’d expect that to be enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. Surely, if you won’t pick up the phone when you see it’s a poll, you also wouldn’t agree to answer the poll if you had picked up. But FiveThirtyEight (RIP) has said that phone survey accuracy has dropped, to the chagrin of polling companies who have to try and make something else.
Many a long, lonely cold night I’ve laid awake dreaming of a phone call.
But alas. Bypassed even by the Refuse of the telemarketing industry.
I left out the word “just” in my post. It’s not “just hangups.” I was simply articulating a different reason that people don’t answer the phone. It does not always have to do with finding calls unpleasant in and of themselves.
And I find the “text first” idea being not unreasonable, either. Phone calls are more disruptive than a text. With a phone call, you get a ring that can interrupt what you’re doing to turn it off, and which will pause all audio if you’re using your phone. With a text, you get a little noise and a popup you can look at if you wish.
And then there’s the fact that the call itself takes more time. So, if you do want to talk to that person, it’s nice to be able to respond back telling them when you will be available.
I would very much expect those to be a bigger reason it became “rude” in some circles not to text first. If you don’t like phone calls, getting a text first doesn’t really help with that. But it would help you have the phone call only when you are available for one.
Sure. I don’t really worry about why other people don’t answer the phone. Makes you Anxious? Too many spam calls? All good. I was responding to the OP who was expressing surprise that OTHER people answer their phone. I answer it because it ain’t no thing for me to do so.
Thought of another example. I was waiting for a call from the car dealership to book a service. Finally I called them, and they said that they had tried several times to call, but no answer. We finally realised that they had a centralised booking system from Toronto as well, and the call id showed it was a Toronto number.
I told them that I didn’t answer unknown numbers from out of province. They said “Oh.”
Now when they call, caller ID clearly identifies them as the dealership in my city. I assume I wasn’t the only one who told them that they had a problem, being identified as a caller from a different province.
There’s probably a lot of overlap between people who feel they must answer a call from an unknown number, and those who find themselves unable to toss out an obvious commercial mailing with no markings or return address that always is a spammy ad or plea for charitable donation, because it might just be a check for $10,000 or a letter from the long-lost child you never knew you had.*
*I threw one of these envelopes in the trash earlier this week unopened. It was very hard to do but I used every ounce of willpower.
If the text’s to my landline number, I’ll get nothing whatsoever. Zilch. Nada. I’ll never know you sent it.
If it’s to my cell, I’ll see it. Sometime. Eventually. That one brief blip is really easy to miss.
I don’t feel that I must answer it. I often do answer, but not if I’m tangled up too much in something else, don’t have my hands free, am in the john, or if I hear the landline but I’m not close enough to pick it up before the voice mail gets it.
I am running a Hospitality Suite at two upcoming science fiction conventions and vice-chairing a third, so I have a lot of people I need to facetime with. When one of the callers turns out to be a scammy scammer type scum there are a variety things I do to amuse myself, such as scream, fake a heart attack, tell them they have reached a Federally restricted number and tell my non-existent team member to do a trace, whisper “What the fuck, dude??? You were told specifically never to call me here!” and various other little mindfucks.
I’m sure that has not gone unnoticed by spammers. All they have to do is spoof a Caller ID that appears to be a pollster, and they can increase their pick up rate.