Stop Unwanted Phone Calls - Comments Page 1

Being on a fixed income, I can't afford all the fancy Caller ID, etc. Unfortunately, these computer generated calls on my landline are not traceable by me. I am on all the "Do Not Call Lists" there are. Since I buy my minutes annually, it is annoying and costly to receive unwanted text messages. If its an incoming call, I just don't answer it. Our representatives in Washington obviously are being well taken care of by the various lobbyist.

I bought a "T-Lock Call Blocker" at Amazon.
BEST MONEY I'VE EVER SPENT!!!!! Works perfectly!!!

While I'm sure you don't want to get into the Call Blocking hardware business, I (...and about 437 other respondents, I imagine!) am a big fan of a call blocking box from www.digitone.com. A good friend of mine has a similar box from another company. They work.

With an 80-call memory for $92.00+, my little unit has brought some peace of mind for the past two years. I do NOT sell them, but mine gets daily use.

Sure, the 80-numbers fill up, since the bad crooks have multiple numbers. Occasionally, some will finally give up, so every four months or so, I just start over.

Every time I get an anonymous/800+ number, it's immediately entered. Future attempts by the law breaker are cut off after one ring. --Saves a lot of running to the phone.

Thanks for the constant consciousness raising on this and other tech subjects.
Sincerely,
John Doyle
Retired from WSB-TV, Channel 2, Atlanta
and The Weather Channel

10/25/2013
7:35 AM

How about when you recognize the call as a telemarketer, don't turn the phone off, just put it in a drawer and let them have their say.
Five minutes later, recover your phone and hang it up.
A bit unfair to the drawer but ........

Our free landline service allows call screening by dialing *60 and is a nice addition for rejecting unwanted phone numbers.

After dialing *60 you are offered a choice of options of turning on/off the service, rejecting the last call, adding an unwanted number, removing a number, etc.

Our particular *60 service allows up to 32 rejected numbers. This *60 service works well for us and is recommended, if available in your area

Sorry Bob, but you left out the newest wave of "Robo Callers" who don't hide their number like a “private caller.” Their number displays on your caller I.D. but a call to that number just gets you another play of the recording.
I've dutifully reported these creeps to the "Do Not Call" list but it hasn't stopped them. If anything, they've gotten worse. Yesterday, we were getting the same call about every 40 minutes, 9 am to 9 pm.
I'm about ready to pull the plug on my phone and tell friends to text message me if they want to talk.

For those using Ooma, you simply go online to your "Call Log" and click the little "Add to Blacklist" button on the line with the number that you want to block. In "Preferences" - "Blacklists" you have the options of sending it directly to voicemail, giving the caller a "Call Blocked" message, giving the caller a "Number Disconnected" message (my favorite), or having the caller get a continuous ring. Currently I have 143 blocked numbers.

Not having a smart phone, I save the caller's number under the name "Telemarket" in my phone contacts and just don't answer the call when I see them ringing. Eventually they seem to get tired of trying.

I like to waste their time. I interrupt them saying "hang on a sec, I've got a pot on the stove" set the phone on the table and walk away. About 5 mins later, pick up the phone and they are gone, gone, gone.

While I Wholeheartedly agree these calls are very annoying, regarding the litigation of David Hakala, to sue the person actually making the call seems a bit pointless. Often people take just about any Job that they can to survive, now going after the big guys and the people that sell your contact info,now thats just sweet.

Oh Bob! I thought you, at least, would support the 'Hit them in the pocket People'.

Employees cost money, phone calls cost money and overheads make it even more costly to phone me!

In the 90s even my 80 year old grandma was using the financial method.

This is how it works.

1. When answering the phone act all interested and then say 'Oh dear I've left some milk on to boil, can you hold on for a moment please?'.

2. Do not put the phone down and leave the line open. You may have to return a few times before the abuser of your privacy eventually twigs....

3. Revel in your success at taking money out of their pockets AND saving someone else from having their meal interupted by taking up the telemarketer's time.

I once had a twerp on the phone for over ten minutes. Returning regularly to say things like 'your call is important to us please continue to hold' - I think they may have realised when I ended with 'We are really busy at the moment. Thank you for calling Dial a Psychiatrist. Please call again later.'

Having a British accent and two (internet routed) phone numbers in the USA I have even played the 'This is a secure number! Identify! This included a side comment of 'This could be a breach trace this call! - the tele idiot became quite apologetic.

There are lots of ways of striking back, not for profits employ profit making companies who are paid on results so don't get all guilty, the charities lose nothing.

As for politicals - I've never seen a politician using a bicycle because they can't afford gas.

AND it brings a smile into your life!

Jon

*77 doesn't work on my AT&T home phone line. I'm told that the number has been disconnected.

Perhaps this is a bit extreme, but it worked. We had an outfit calling everyone in the area everyday. The caller ID number was a fake, no company name was given, if you requested to be removed from their call list they'd hang up on you and continue to call. With no valid number I couldn't register a complaint. It was a home service they were selling.
So I told them to come on out, then refused to answer the door or phone. When they called me back to complain I just hung up on them. Turn about is fair play. The calls stopped.

I found that NEVER giving my phone number at a store checkout helps tremendously. I also NEVER answer my land line, nor cell until I know it's a friend. If a telemarketer, machine or human, never gets a person, they don't want to waste their time in the future & will take you off their lists. I get approximately 1 telemarketer call a year.

We were so hared by telemarketers calling that I installed a call blocker, Digitone Call Blocker 10. I then entered all 800 prefixes (800, 811,822, etc.). This has decreased our unwanted calls to almost none.

What can you do about robo-calls? I rarely get them on my cell phone (have text & data blocked-- it's voice only), but often get them on my land line. At one time, I heard/read something that they would not be/no longer be allowed for "cold calling", but obviously, that bit of regulation didn't happen.

The "do not call" list doesn't seem to phase them, and there's no live person to tell not to call again (and they DO call again...). If you hang on until the end of the pitch, there's MAYBE a voice mail option to "get more information", but no option to be removed from their call list. And nobody to whom to complain is identified.

Rather than going through all sorts of changes my wife and I ask the telemarketer to mail a copy of their pitch so that we can study it a leisure. When they reply that they have nothing to send then we ask them to write up a summary. They respond in all sorts of ways and we politely continue to ask for a written summary. Marketers hang up as they can't afford to take time. The number of calls has decreased more than when we signed up for our no call list.

Even more interesting are the folks who say they are a Microsoft rep. I just never can figure out how to follow their patient instructions to let them into my system so they can fix the problem I didn't even know I had. For variety I tell them I have an Apple and don't use Microsoft products.

Hucksters have been around since the dawn of recorded history. Its about the third oldest profession. No sense worrying about it. They use variations of techniques designed to raise anxiety to get folks to buy into fraud. They key is to never make a financial commitment when someone calls you - only think about buying when you've initiated the contact.

Now I've got to hurriedly respond to the blinking message on my screen that tells me my memory is full and that a Windows related PC disaster is about to happen to my non-Windows system. Oh, wait a minute, its just another kind of fakery that buys an ad so as to piggyback onto Bob Rankin's integrity and credibility!

Things I enjoy doing to unwanted callers if I answer at all...

Ask a question and the quietly sit the phone down so you waste a lot more of their time than they have yours.

Make a note of their phone number and use it to fill out web forms that insist on getting a number before you can view information. That way they get to hear from people just like them.

We recently got rid of our house phone entirely after a 4am robocall from the local newspaper asking if we wanted to subscribe. The only calls we were receiving were sales/"charities"/unknown, so why bother? It's so quiet in the house now. I still give out the old number if anyone asks so my cell phone will continue to receive only the calls I want.

"Mr. Number" also works on Android once you get a call and you don't want any more from that number, like when NationStar Mortgage bought all of the home loans from B of A and started calling all of the borrowers who didn't have their payment in by the due date even though there is a 15 day grace period!