Your Cell Number Will Be Available To Telemarketers, UNLESS YOU ACT NOW!!!

FYI: political calls and nonprofits are exempt. As mentioned above, in more detail: https://www.donotcall.gov/faq/faqbusiness.aspx

 

So long as we are here anyway, there are a number of states that also have a no call list, sometimes with more restrictions than the federal list. Here is the best list of states i found:

http://www.the-dma.org/government/donotcalllists.shtml

 

Since signing up my cell phone on the DNC list seven years ago -- prompted by a vacation timeshare seller violating the prohibition on cold calls to cell phones -- only one company has violated it.

The land line, signed up before the DNC went into effect, is far worse.

 

Should you wish to set up call blocking on your own, I use Vonage as my Phone company and signed up for Anonymous Call Block.
Anonymous Call Block & Rejection. Vonage Standard Calling Plan Features.

AT&T also offers it, calling it Anonymous Call Rejection "To activate Anonymous Call Rejection, press *77"

With ACB, callers unwilling to give their number are shunted to a recording and your phone never rings. I find that a wildly high percentage of telemarketers (and drunks) are unwilling to give their number, so I never hear from them.

 

My experience is on my land-line phone. My cell phone is always off, unless I want to make a call. I never check my cell phone messages because all my friends know not to call my cell phone, as it will be off and I will never even know there was a call. Unless I am meeting someone and they might need to call at the last minute if there's a problem.

I like that idea. I'll have to see if Qwest offers that. They are the only land-line phone company here. I've considered Vonage, but their reliability depends on my ISP being up, and their quality is slightly below land-line. The PFI office uses Vonage, which gives them to ability to receive calls when they travel, but there's always an annoying delay on the line, and for my home phone I think that would drive me nuts.

I've also considered dumping my land line and going cell only, but the choice of phones and plans is too confusing. And I no longer have any close family that I need to keep in touch with while traveling.

 

They do.

http://www.qwest.com/residential/pdf/user_guides/english/AnonymousCR.pdf

 

Thanks for that, Jimbo.

 

Snopes is always one's friend.

Donotcall made HUGE differences for me years ago. But I still get calls. Here is who I get them from:

1) My banks (not very often)
2) Charities (some frequency)
3) Collections agencies (previous owner four years ago had my number)

I CANNOT BELIEVE it's still impossible to block specific numbers on home phones.

So, last week, I dropped my home phone with time warner for $40/month and got OOMA. $200 unit, so far so good, outrageous reviews on Amazon. The premier service for it at $10/month includes not only individual number blocking but a community blacklist! I have not explored how well that blacklist works but I bet it works to block a lot of the crap I'd otherwise get.

It seems each year or so there is a very big scam like the one we all had a year ago from a company giving new insurance rates. It took months for the stupid government to lock these idiots out. Now I could block them all first shot.

 

Our home Panasonic cordless phone has the ability to block up to 20 numbers. The phone will still ring once until the caller ID info comes through, then the phone will send the caller a bust signal and disconnect. You do need caller ID for it to work.

ATT also has individual phone number call blocking available but you may have to pay extra for it.

 

That is pretty good, though even that one ring would, just a tiny bit, make me angry even just knowing that they tried to call me. 20 wouldn't be enough for me, though For $40/month I'm surprised time warner could never offer anything like this, but OOMA at a third of that amount of money can.

 

I don't think I very often get two calls from the same spammer. The number-blocking would be more useful for someone being pestered by an individual person or company. I think it's usually a new spammer every time. And never the sort of "legitimate" companies that would respect the list. The organizations exempt from the do-not-call list are required to maintain their own list, and are not permitted to call you once you've asked them to stop calling you. I always ask. By and large, they do not call again. But there's always a new charity or a new (probably overseas-based) scam.

There is a service, but you have to pay for it if you have Qwest (as I do): You can have EVERY call you receive answered by a recording that says something to the effect of: "You have reached a number that does not accept solicitations. If you are a solicitor please hang up. Otherwise press 1." If they press 1 the call rings through. You can then add a small number of numbers to a white list, which will ring through without getting the recording. It just doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

Interesting, that could be built into an answering machine.:rockon:

I'm also on the gummn't do not call list and it works well enough except during campaign season.

 

Telemarketing has become a serious problem in this country. Fortunately, my phones have a readout of who is calling, so we just don't answer. But the phone digital answerer will take some of these calls, which give out 3 bleeps on your answering machine. That is annoying.
I didn't know about the cell phones, and registered those too.

It doesn't seem to make much difference. I registered my main phone a couple of years ago, and I still get a barrage of calls from charities and businesses. I believe charities are exempt from donotcall, but they should not be. Also, a lot of political calls.

Advertising is becoming an increasingly intrusive tool in our society, not only on the phones but also on TV and the internet. I had to look at "Obama Socialist" in my sports chatgroup all summer. My conservative broker referred to Obama as a "socialist" in a phone conversation last week. What is this world coming to. The Obama people still don't know what they're dealing with.

The political propaganda being spread in the TV media through advertising is a threat to democracy that needs to be dealt with. Restoring the Fairness Doctrine Reagan's FCC eliminated in the 1980s would require balanced political advertising again, and eliminate a lot of those. But the media is making hundreds of millions on such advertising, so NAB lobby is probably against it. Obama? No leadership there.

Pardon the digression, but advertising has become one giant social problem.

 

You've not had the pleasure then of the number's previous owner screwing his creditors.

Agree wholeheartedly and it's a matter I've thought on before.

Also agree. In fact, I think that lobbying is THE most significant threat to democracy in this country and I'm quite serious. The entire political process has been completely poisoned by campaign contributions and advertising for or against certain political leaders. Both of the main political parties are totally and hopelessly beholden to their corporate interests and it takes only an evening watching TV during election season to see that money is so disgustingly infused into politics that surely it owns it.

 

Some answering machines beep even when you turn the volume off. Others do not. I got one that does not. When I turn off the volume, the machine makes no noise. When I then turn off the phone ringer (at night or when I take a nap) there is no sound at all when someone calls.

Note that even charities and political organizations are forbidden to call you if you ask them not to. Whenever you get such a call, tell them not to call you again. The recorded ones, if they are from a legitimate outfit, will end by telling you to press a number if you do not wish to receive further calls.

I dislike both parties and was leaning toward voting for a protest candidate in our Senate race. But I got so many really nasty automated calls using dirty and untrue arguments against the incumbent, that I ended up voting for her. Of course, since the race was not decided by one vote, mine did not matter.

Actually, I've had that "pleasure." But the calls only came about once a month when I first got this number, and now they're only once or twice a year. Not a really big deal. I tell them that nobody by that name has been at this number for at least the 3 or 4 years I've had it.

 

They are forbidden, but there are so many you end up doing a lot of "NEVER CALL AGAIN" messages.

My personal hate, which really foments deep from within my soul, is when I get a call and it's some automated line and most of the time (for from some of these numbers it truly is most of the time) when I pick up to say hello, which I intend to follow up with a never call me again message, there is silence and/or a click because the damn automated system did not engage properly. Those are infuriating, so I can receive many calls from the same number and literally powerless to do anything about it.

And me having to listen to an automated call and then press a number that is just unacceptable. It should be patently illegal for any organization whatsoever to call you unless discussing your account. No charities. No credit card companies calling with some stupid offer, either.

 

A couple of years ago my girlfriend told me about call blocking. I thought it was great and immediately signed up. Then I quickly learned two facts:

1) You can block a maximum of 25 numbers.
2) Telemarketing firms have a lot more than 25 numbers.

Oh, well, it still blocks those simpletons who have a blank caller ID, but now most telemarketing firms learned to put something in that field, even if that something just says "Unavailable".

 

I agree with you.

Unsolicited calls should be illegal. Automated calls should be illegal. Recorded calls should be illegal. Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of this stuff originates at overseas call centers and enforcement would be impossible.

BTW, those calls where nobody comes on the line, I believe what's happening is that they originate at massive call centers where the dialing is automatic but then a person talks to you. To maximize efficiency, they make more calls than they can handle. It's cheaper for them to call you and hang up than to have operators sitting idly waiting for a call to take. And they don't know exactly who will answer. So they make extra calls. (This should be illegal, of course.) It's the same as airlines over-selling a flight in the anticipation of no-shows. They do this intentionally, to increase profit, even though kicking people off a flight creates customer bad will.

One solution might be to build a whitelist into your phone. Known numbers would ring through, and unknown numbers would go to voice mail. You might even get fancier, and have voice mail ring through to you if the caller enters the correct code, which you would give to your kids, parents, and spouse, in case they had to call you from a phone other than their own. This should be trivial to implement in a smartphone.

 

That had not occurred to me, but I bet you're right. I have received a call several times in a row recently and every single time I received no person on the line.

If not a white list, your code idea works. Or heck even a very simple skill-testing question, like what is generally the color of the sky, and then if you don't get it right it just drops the call. I'm waiting to see how his ooma blacklist number works out. So far I'll say we've received no calls whatsoever that are not from people we know.