If you come to my front door and I am not expecting you, don’t be upset if I don’t answer the door.
If you call and I don’t recognize your number, I probably will not answer. If you don’t leave a message then you really didn’t want to talk to me.
Bingo. Leave a message and I’ll listen and call back (if it’s legit)
Call and don’t leave a message? It’s obviously not important.
Seriously, I’m walking into spiderwebs.
If it’s important, they’ll leave a message… or better yet, send a text.
I still carry a pager as does every physician I know.
My method.
I don’t even trust calls from, say, my cell provider’s number. They get spoofed. I had a Spam Phishing call ostensibly from Verizon that came from Verizon’s customer service number. Called Verizon later-it was a scam. Even if I get a message, I call back on any business/financial/utility/you-name-it provider’s main number.
Smart.
During my cross country drive I had opportunity to discuss the myriad ways that scammers spoof websites/ phone numbers. With my broad point being ‘never trust a link or phone number claiming to be from a bank. Always go to their main website or phone number directly, never through given information’
Exactly.
Like most, we use caller ID and with Comcast it displays the ID on the TV via an overlay as well. But we still have to listen to the shrill ringing and the voice of phone system announcing (text to speech fashion) who is calling. And the vast, vast majority of the time it’s spam crap. And as we get deep into the election year cycle, so much of it is polling, which you can’t block like you can (theoretically) do for marketing stuff (no call lists, etc.). I even get this crap on my cell.
But we keep the land line because one, it’s bundled with the other stuff, and two, our reception with wireless where we live is problematic.
As a couple people have mentioned, if I don’t recognize a number then I normally don’t answer the phone. I have an answering service. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.
I was generally only getting spam calls spoofed to be from the first six digits of my phone number. I got Robokiller and now they just get blocked automatically. The chances that I would actually care about a call from someone with those numbers are miniscule.
Still annoying that I had to do that.
I’m in sales and service so a big part of my job is taking calls and talking to people. There are people out there who phone still.
Right at the end of my work day I always call my GF before I leave the office. I just want to catch up, say hi, see if there’s anything I need to pick up on the way home.
I’m more likely to phone than text, but I know I’m a bit of a dinosaur. I do get my fair share of fake phone calls, too.
I’m pretty convinced that one of the primary reasons that people increasingly think their phones (especially private ones) are useless is precisely because of the prevalence of solicitations.
I sincerely believe one of the greatest things our government could do to improve its citizens’ quality of life is just enact a total ban on random phone solicitations (mail and email, too, but let’s stick with phones). No cold calls! The potential customer would have to have contacted you in the past and gone on record as agreeing to be contacted later. I don’t think they benefit anyone in any substantial way. It’s basically static on our communication system and it has been slowly rendering that system worthless. Businesses that rely on blanket solicitation to make money are relying on a degenerate practice where they hope to find one lead by irritating hundreds of people who aren’t remotely interested. They need to find a non-sociopathic method of connecting to their customers.
How am I wrong?
Politicians won’t enact something that keeps their phone banks from calling voters.
Solar companies and so many different bogus, er charities would suffer.
Yeah, that’s absolutely the case, isn’t it? I will exempt them temporarily if they stand up for the everyday citizen against telemarketing businesses first. Then when everyone has peaceful phone lines that only get clogged with garbage come election season, they’ll start demanding that politicians take the “No solicitations pledge.”
Maybe, but I’m on a bunch of political lists since I registered as a Democrat (and gave a small donation to a campaign) in 2016 and I’m not actually sure I’ve ever been called by anyone’s team. I’m absolutely bombarded by email and receive semi-regular texts begging for contributions. I feel like they’re already adapting to generations that don’t like using the phone and it’s only a matter of time before they won’t care that much.
Indiana and Nevada have to an extent – no automated phone calls. Which means no IVR polling, which means we typically get very volatile, bouncy poll numbers from those states. They’re a pain in the butt to poll to any degree.
Huh. New York must have a rule too because I only get polls with humans asking dumb questions.
“Which of the following is the trait you admire most for President Bush?”
All of them.