A rite of passage

[Spezialist]

So guys in the interest of contuing traditions, I’m teaching my middle schoolers all of the phun stuff of yore.
They’ve got a phone of their own and it keeps getting random sales calls.
And it’s really frustrating to them, solution!
CRANK CALL EM BACK!

Any other ideas for modern irritations with old solutions?
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[modok]

Just hit 2 repeatedly, works sometimes.

[Spezialist]

I find it amazing that phone workers get all bent so quickly when a kid calls em back.
Personally my answering machine message is enough to screen out most but my true friends.
It reads; hello? ______ Oh how are you?

Back in the day, messages like that were popular in the inner circle of Discordanism.

Keep hitting 2 huh?

Anybody remember dialing POP-CORN and having a party?
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[calvinater]

look up Joy Bubbles and phone freaking.
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"Albatross"!

[vwracerdave]

[Cusser]

Folks at work a few years ago talked me into Ooma to replace traditional home phone, uses the Internet and costs just under $5 a month. Unlimited calls, voicemail, caller ID, uses same home phones that I had.

So my message states that "due to a plethora of unwanted calls that I let calls go directly to voicemail, and if you don't understand what plethora means, then you're the type of caller I'm trying to avoid".

Occasionally I will answer, and if it's a semi-humanoid there, I blow a whistle into the microphone. Loud. Real loud.

One can always play deaf, caller will not want to call back. It's the theory of acting handicapped if someone in the mall wants you to participate in a survey....
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1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[TDCTDI]

What color panties are you wearing?

Or, if they have a thick accent, I put on my mah bestest suthun drawl (Think Foghorn Leghorn here) & ask “Whut?”, “Whut?”, “Ah can’t unnerstan y’all”. After about 5 minutes, they’ll start cussing & oddly, it’s pretty clear.
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Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[calvinater]

that boy"s about as sharp as a bowlin" ball.
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"Albatross"!

[raygreenwood]

First....DO NOT CALL THEM BACK.
Second.....its time to come into the current world and understand....NEVER answer a call unless you know the number and/or have it programmed into your phone.

Why?

This is NOT about active scams for the most part....where people tell you that you are in trouble or try to get you to part with information....or even actively try to sell you something.

Its about the biggest business of all of them.....live number sales. The vast majority of single ring through three ring calls that leave no message...are simply checking to see if its a live number that someone answers. If it is.....they record that number to a list. They sell that list to REAL telemarketers. These marketing number sales compabies get about $1k for a list of 10,000 live numbers. These are cold call numbers.

They get 3-5X that amount for a list that is in the demographic their telemarketing customer wants.....like men or women in the X age group or professionals from X industry or market segment.

So if you answer.....even if they hang up....you go on the low cost list. If you answer and chat and they find out ANYTHING.....like you are male/female....around X age...live in X area or do X....you go on a more expensive list.

Either way....it guarantees you will get many more calls from more persistent people.

How do I know this? Because I worked for a trade association and our hack marketers bought lists from these companies. I go into a hundred plus companies per year and hsve been into over 4000. I personally know of HUNDREDS of companies whose external marketing departments buy these lists.

And.....requesting to be put on the no call list....largely does not work except for legitimate companies that have a reputation to protect. The vast majority of the number collectors and work from home telemarketers.....cannot even be called back! Thats because they are using a computerized software dialer that switches between HUNDREDS of out of service numbers.
That is another thing that numbers are collected for. When they find one not in use....they can use it to call someone else from becuse its programmed into the system. Yes....it's illegal.....but the phone companies say they cannot catch them.

The vast majority of these companies DO NOT CARE about the no call list or violating it....because they cannot be easily caught

Go ahead...try it. Start calling some of these no name numbers back. You will be stunned at how many are disconnected lines.

The best method...is not to call them and not to answer them. When a no name calls....googl3 the number. A great many will show up on sites like "800 notes".....with a list of complaints that confirm if its a scam or not. Then block it.

From now on that number calls you and it gets a ring and thats it. No message no texts. They may keep you on a live number list....but it takes you off the demographic list.

Lastly...if you travel a lot by vehcile like I do.....make notice. If you have just driven through about 2-3 states.....and used your phone all along the way...and/or stopped for gas sevdral timez and used an atm or credit card at the pump.....that has your number associated with the account......you can start getting robo calls from every area code you went through.

They are hacking numbers off of the cell networks of out of area phones in operation....and virtually every gas chain is selling your information. Ray

[cdennisg]

^^^ This. Do Not answer the damn phone if you don't recognize the number. Period.
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nothing

[FullFender]

if its a scammer/telemarketer I usually like to answer "Federal Communications Commision, Fraud Department. How can I help you?. That usually gets them to stop

[Zundfolge1432]

[typ914]

According to Clark Howard, a consumer guru, if you answer the spam calls at all and press the number to be removed from the calling list, all you are doing is telling them that your number is an active number. There is a 99% chance you wont be removed from the calling list and your number will be passed on to other spammers. His recommendation is don't answer numbers you don't know. If the caller is important they will leave a message.
There are days I get dozens of these calls. Many back to back. If i am bored and have time to waste I retaliate by wasting their time. I once kept calling them back for over an hour. They were finally screaming at me to stop calling. Other occasions I just started asking them stupid questions keeping them on the line for as long as I could. They hate that because they normally get paid by the number of calls they do. Since most of the calls come out of India I have heard of people just randomly start insulting India, their culture and talking about how good cow tastes. I have heard that really works to make them stop.It really pisses them off. Most of the time I just don,t answer the calls.

[Spezialist]

[scottyrocks]

There is an app called Visual Voice Mail. You can play them on your phone without dialing in. This has made it easier )for me) to ignore those non-familiar numbers. Dialing into VM for my messages was a pain, with the dialing, ringing, and then password entry. Just takes too much time (yes, first-world problem), especially if you do it a lot.

When using VV, you tap the icon, and you can see each call, and whether a message was left, and how long the message is. The number-harvesters always show 2 or 3 second VMs, so you know not to bother listening or calling back. Listening to VMs is simple. Just push the play button. Erasing is just as easy.

Another ploy they use is to call you from not only the same area code, but also exchange, and sometimes two numbers of the final four that match yours. Many people think that it's someone close to them, or they miss-see it as a known-to-them number and answer the call.
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“If you care for a thing long enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? Mending old things, preserving them, looking after them – on some level there's no rational grounds for it.”
– D. Tartt, 'The Goldfinch'

[EverettB]

[Zundfolge1432]

How’s this? I looked the other day and someone had spoofed my number. I was afraid to answer, felt like twilight zone.

[cdennisg]

[ALLWAGONS]

I would play Mary had a little lamb over and over, It only works with a land line phone. On the other hand, I witnessed an accident. the victim who was badly injured. asked me to please call her husband. dumbass took forever to answer the phone because he didn't recognize the number!
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I'd be UNSTOPPABLE if not for Law Enforcement and PHYSICS.

I recycle old cars and parts, other than when I rot, that's as Green as I am going to get.

Thanks to my Tesla driving neighbors, I feel more relaxed driving my SUBURBAN and old VW's.

NON INFLUENCER APPROVED

[KTPhil]

The worst, WORST thing you can do is answer, and say "hello" twice. This was natural when you had a human caller on the other end. You don't hear anything after your first "hello," so you repeat it. Even answering machine don't do this, only a live human.

But DON'T DO IT!

With voice recognition, this tells the computer that a real human is on this number, and you are on the highest-rated list for future spam callers.

Ignore them, and if they don't leave a message, you didn't need to talk to them anyway. If it's urgent and a friend, they'll text you.