About 4 times a week for the past few weeks now I’ve come home to find the following message on my answering machine:
(SFX: 3-note rising tone)
(Placid recorded female voice): We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again.
I’m familiar with this error message, but am confused as to how it ends up on my machine. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it the result of a telemarketers computer dialer? Is my dog trying to make outgoing calls? What gives?
In all likelihood, someone is playing a prank on you. They will record the message, then call your number when they know you won’t be home and playback the recording. I’ve had it done to me a couple of times.
I believe Fat Bald Guy is right. I did it to a friend of mine. I got sick of ringing him and getting the answering machine, so one day I rang everyone I knew with an answering machine and recorded their messages. I then rang my friend and each time I was asked to leave a message I left someone else’s “leave a message” message. He was absolutely baffled because it seemed like his answering machine was ringing other answering machines. People who have heard about this have tried it with equal success.
I dunno about the prank theory. It would be pretty damn near the lamest prank I ever heard.
Perhaps there was incoming call that hung up when it heard the machine answer. The line did not disconnect properly at the answering machine end, and the telco played its message after timing out waiting for the disconnect from the answering machine side.
I may have actually seen this happen with my answering machine (I tend to screen calls), but I cannot say for sure.
Revtim is probably correct. I had someone do this to me constantly in college. He would call me, the answering machine would start, then he’d hang up and pick up again too quickly. This invoked a three-way call. Then he’d dial someone else and I would end up with the third party’s outgoing message as a new message on my machine. (hope all that made sense) It took a while to figure this out.
Revtim is right. My machine does this. If the caller hangs up at a certain point (like after the message but before the beep) the machine doesn’t catch the hangup and leaves the line open while the telco warning plays.
This happened all the time at our house until we got “Privacy Director” on our phone line.
Some telemarketers use a computer to call several lines at one time and will pick up on whichever one gets a live person answering. (When you have to say “Hello”, wait a couple of seconds, “Hello” again THEN hear the telemarketer pick up). Sometimes these systems don’t disconnect properly because your machine is still talking. Leaving you still connecting to the phone systems. That’s when you get “be de dee - we’re sorry but your call …”
If you have CallerID you can see what number has called you. In our case, it was always an Out-of-Area or known telemarketer. So we blocked all unidentified call and don’t have this problem very often anymore.
I had a fifteen year old answering machine that started acting this way suddenly a few years back. I don’t know if it was a change in the telemarketer technology or if it was just the machine getting old. After awhile of dealing with “messages” that mostly contained two minutes of an extra loud “off hook” tone, I decided it was time to junk the answering machine. It never happened since, though my new machine hardly gets the workout my old machine had to deal with thanks to the no-call list.