What is with all the long distance telephone calls that I’ve been receiving in the last three months or so?
There are days when I get as many as 10 long distance or 1-800 number calls.
I’ve always been in the habit of not picking up the phone if I don’t recognize the number and uhm, well sometimes even when I do know who’s calling. For me, answering the phone depends upon what I’m doing at the time of the call, who’s calling and how I’m feeling. I often don’t feel well and it seems that many of the people I know are quite chatty on the phone and for me, there’s nothing worse than talking on the phone for an hour when I feel like roadkill.
When I do answer some of these long distance calls I’ve encountered people telling me I’ve won a prize, recorded automatic messages for anything from political parties calling about provincial election that took place yesterday (most of those were local calls actually) to companies trying to get me to buy things.
One of the most irritating callers was a company that told me that sometime in the past I had applied online to work for a company and they wanted to talk to me about how I could make money with them, but they needed my credit card number first. Huh? No I didn’t apply online to work with any companies lately and why on earth would you ever need my credit card number. When I started questioning the caller they’d hang up.
Out of the 100 or so calls they made to my home we answered maybe 4 of the calls and they hung up each time we questioned them or told them to take us off their call list.
They seem to have finally given up.
Still … I’m getting so many long distance calls from people who don’t bother to leave a message when they don’t get an answer that it’s becoming ridiculous.
When these companies do end up leaving a message it’s often on my cell phone as I leave our cell number in our home telephone message. Of course, we rarely use our cell phone so if someone is trying to reach us about something important it doesn’t make any sense to leave a message on our cell.
What’s worse is that if these people have called long distance and they leave a message if it’s legit and I want to call back they often only leave a true long distance number instead of a 1-800 number for me to call. No – unless it’s something vital I’m not spending money to call you back long distance during business hours. Leave a message, and leave a number that doesn’t cost me anything in order to return your call and just maybe I’ll call you back. Maybe.
Earlier today I answered a 1-800 call. I had an automated “secretary” inform me to wait on the line as they tried to connect me with the caller. The automated secretary tried three or four times and then told me they’d call me back another time when they could connect me with the caller.
Huh? If you are calling me you’d better be on the other end of the line when I pick up.
It would be nice if the automated secretary could have at least told me who was trying to call. I’ve found that sometimes when my bank or Visa has called in the past there’s sometimes a delay in the connection as if they were using some automated calling system. So I suppose that call could have been something official, but I still have no idea why they’d call.
It’s not like I’ve done anything to bring this on. I rarely leave my telephone number on anything online unless it’s with a company that I’m doing some work for, have partnered with or if it’s for something official like online banking or something similar. Plus, I always read the fine print in the terms of service or privacy pages on sites that I must give personal info on in order to register with and if I don’t like their terms I don’t register.
As of this moment I’m naming these kinds of nuisance long distance called telephone spam. Are you with me on this? Do you frequently get calls like this too?
yes i have recived these telephone spams, they are really bothering me a lot. Mainly those are for surveys etc, and they take up a lot of time aswell.
First, sorry for my bad english, i’m italian.
I’m not surprised to read that…also in Italy in the last months telephone spam was a big problem.
Spammers…there is not a cure for these persons…
Actually I did not have much problems with such spam calls. And if someone calls me which I do not like I either have fun with it (usually if there are girls on the line) or I end it as fast as possible. I use the 3 Question method.
1. What is your first and last name
2. what company do you work for
3. where do you have my number from
Easy, almost always works.
I haven’t been dealing with this problem, but my mom has– to the point she’s talking about turning off her caller ID, and just disconnecting the phone most of the time!
I answer the phone for a large company and get TONS of those automated calls. “Please stay on the line, we have a very important phone call for you.” Funny, but I thought if it really WAS important, you’d be there when I answered the phone. I really hate it when people call me and have me on hold.
Haha! I have an unlisted phone number and only get these sort of call once in a blue moon. But even than I hate it!
yes and i hate it…thank good they changed the law in germany but they still call us …if i had the chance to visit such people…grr
site funda – If they want me to answer surveys I am almost always “Busy” or just about to go out the door. LOL For the most part thought I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize but they keep calling and calling and frankly the constant ringing of the phone in my home all day drives me nuts!
Peter oh yes I ask these callers who they are and where they are calling from and so on. The most troubling one was the example I gave in my post of the company that said I’d applied to work for them (some online thing) and wanted my credit card number and wanted me to listen to some long taped explanation. Asking questions resulted in them hanging up on ME. Yet they kept calling back and calling back. It was terrible.
Jennifer yes I hate those automated calls too. If they’re calling to talk to you about something at least have the decency to actually be on the phone when I pick up. LOL
I also hate it when someone calls and one of the first things they ask is “who am I speaking to”? Well … hello … you called here – don’t you know who you are speaking to?
Dee with this flurry of calls lately I’ve actually thought about getting an unlisted number.
It’s not marketers that are calling. In Canada we have a special registry and if you say no marketing calls your name is distributed and removed from marketing lists – well within Canada. There are a few ways to get around this registry/law though and I think it is to outsource your calls from another country then the law doesn’t apply. Which may be why I’ve had a sudden increase in long distance callers.
Hi Tricia,
We have something similar to that registry you have, but that’s only for company’s registered on that list. And there’s no law for these kind of practises over here yet.
It’s not the fact that these marketers are trying to sell you something (although I hear a lot of people complaining they always seem to call during dinner or tv)it’s the ones that are trying to scam you by trying to get information they should not be asking for (like your credit card example)
And 10 1-800 cals a day?? Wow that’s a bit much! Better get that unlisted number. 😉
Hi Tricia,
We have something similar to that registry you have, but that’s only for company’s registered on that list. And there’s no law for these kind of practises over here yet.
It’s not the fact that these marketers are trying to sell you something (although I hear a lot of people complaining they always seem to call during dinner or tv)it’s the ones that are trying to scam you by trying to get information they should not be asking for (like your credit card example)
And 10 1-800 calls a day?? Wow that’s a bit much! Better get that unlisted number. 😉
We have a caller preference that stops cold callers. You have to register with them.
Gah. We get that all the time at work. It’s such a pain in the butt that some days, I REALLY hate answering the phone!
Gah i hate people that call my home number, I never get any calls for me on my home number, I average about 10-15 calls a day for someone that hasn’t had this number in 2 years..it goes through phases..at times we get alot, then we go months without any..
When a toll free number shows up on your caller id, it’s not there because the caller is calling you on a toll free number. Toll Free Numbers CAN’T make outbound calls. Think of them like remote call forwarded numbers that just forward callers to another local number.
When a toll free number shows up on your caller ID, it means that the caller is calling from a larger phone system that allows the caller to program the caller ID information. So do NOT take this as proof that the caller is actually connected with that number or that this number will reach the same people. It is against the regulations to program someone else’s number into the caller ID information, but that obviously doesn’t phase the people that are involved with any type of scam.
Just because they have a toll free number on their caller ID certainly doesn’t prove they’re doing anything nefarious, but it does tell you that they are probably in some type of call center and are often telemarketers. Your friends don’t have toll free numbers on their caller ID, even if they have a toll free number. So when I see an 800 number on the caller ID, I don’t give out my name or any information.
Bill Quimby, President and Founder of TollFreeNumbers.com