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Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Atlantic, written by Alexis C. Madrigal: No one picks up the phone anymore. Even many businesses do everything they can to avoid picking up the phone. Of the 50 or so calls I received in the last month, I might have picked up four or five times. The reflex of answering -- built so deeply into people who grew up in 20th-century telephonic culture -- is gone. There are many reasons for the slow erosion of this commons. The most important aspect is structural: There are simply more communication options. Text messaging and its associated multimedia variations are rich and wonderful: words mixed with emoji, Bitmoji, reaction gifs, regular old photos, video, links. Texting is fun, lightly asynchronous, and possible to do with many people simultaneously. It's almost as immediate as a phone call, but not quite. You've got your Twitter, your Facebook, your work Slack, your email, FaceTimes incoming from family members. So many little dings have begun to make the rings obsolete.
But in the last couple years, there is a more specific reason for eyeing my phone's ring warily. Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another. [...] There are unsolicited telemarketing calls. There are straight-up robocalls that merely deliver recorded messages. There are the cyborg telemarketers, who sit in call centers playing prerecorded bits of audio to simulate a conversation. There are the spam phone calls, whose sole purpose seems to be verifying that your phone number is real and working.
But in the last couple years, there is a more specific reason for eyeing my phone's ring warily. Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another. [...] There are unsolicited telemarketing calls. There are straight-up robocalls that merely deliver recorded messages. There are the cyborg telemarketers, who sit in call centers playing prerecorded bits of audio to simulate a conversation. There are the spam phone calls, whose sole purpose seems to be verifying that your phone number is real and working.
I just don't understand how you can have spam calls like that and be ok with it. Is it an american thing?
Do people think that proper laws to outlaw that behaviour is some sort of free speech issue?
FIRST POST for the ladies
(tips fedora)
Can also be because gen-x and millenial generations are becoming dominant in the workplace.
My anecdote is my mother who worked as a receptionist and secretary for decades. It's ingrained in her culture not to hang up and to always answer the phone, even though she retired 20 years ago. This includes the obvious scammers from out of country that ask questions about her computer. "My computer is running fine, no I don't think I need to give you that, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you".
Anymore, 85% ((FTA) of calls are garbage, and with caller ID spoofing running rampant, you really don't know whom to answer that's outside your whitelist / phone book.
I never answer calls anymore. 95% of the calls I get are scammers and spammers. And the caller ID is always spoofed to something that looks similar to my own number.
I've even had people call me claiming my number is spamming them!
The phone companies should be held liable for not fixing caller ID spoofing. There are numerous ways to do this. Caller ID spoofing is needed for corporate main numbers and the like. Those could be registered just like SSL certs. There is no reason a random device should be allowed to spoof.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
It’s frustrating and it’s rude. All those other options allow you to control your intereactions, that is, they are not ‘real’, they are filtered.
Whole generations now think completely disconnected and antisocial behaviour is acceptable. Don’t care? See how that works out for you long run.
You need to move to a country where all the types of spam you just listed are illegal. I've received exactly one "spam" call in the past 10 years.
Ever. I am not available.
Everyone texts me in advance
to ask if/when I want to call them back...
All other incoming #'s fall away.
now think completely disconnected and antisocial behaviour is acceptable. Don’t care? See how that works out for you long run.
I agree. I just had a conversation with a support employee who works for me yesterday. I told them to get out of their desk and walk to the customer's desk and give them an update on the situation IN PERSON. They were at a loss to see why a simple text or email wasn't good enough. True customer service is becoming a lost art because of this new disconnected mentality.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
It's frustrating and rude that some people think they can interrupt me via the telephone to tell me something that they think is SUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT and needs to be said right now. Who gives a fuck if I'm in the middle of a meal, right?
Growing up, we turned the ringer off on the phone during dinner. It's my telephone and I'll decide if I want to pick it up or not. Don't like it? Leave a voicemail or send an SMS like a normal fucking person.
And shut down 911, so when you you have an emergency, you wait for someone to save you on twitter, facebook or any social media, and thanks God they all allow you to use emojis :-)
Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another.
Only give it to your friends, and use an incoming block list to stop political and marketing calls. With just a little care you will not get spam calls.
I do not get spam phone calls, or political ones. I literally can't remember the last time that's happened. I also do not get spam emails, because I am careful what I do with my email, and I use throw-aways for anything which may leak it. With proper discipline you don't have to have your email even appear on anyone's spam lists.
Stop tolerating this nonsense if you want the situation change. We have these problems because people tolerate them.
I'm 51 and definitely from the generation that always answered the phone.
I notice as my fellow employees get younger there is much less use of voice calls, with instant messaging and emails being preferred instead. The problem is that these communication methods often seem really inefficient and are as easy to ignore or under-respond to as a phone with a ringer on silent.
We've had problems crop up with clients and you'd never know what the nature and magnitude of them is when you get short texts like "Do you know about the issue at MZR?"
Does either response provide any value? I can answer "Yes" without actually knowing because the dumb text made it seem like there was one. I can answer no and what value does that add to the person asking?
Had they just fucking called we both would have been able to quickly sort out who knew what and who was going to do anything about it.
Indeed the experience of talking to someone over the phone is largely gone in the US, because, really you so often find the number calling you is spam. This is worse, actually, on mobile, because of the lack of traditional callerid. There are applications that have pools of other peoples #, which can tell you whether many of the calls are spam upfront, but; they are not pools of people you know, or that simply identify all numbers, like you would get with callerid. Hence, if you see an unknown # that is not in the apps pool, you still do not know if it is spam or someone you actually know who's # you do not recognize/had not stored, and even then 8 out of 10 times it is spam, telemarketers, etc. Hence how you get awful things like the facebook nation instead.
For me it is more like 95% that is spam. In the rare event I take the call, the caller either just close the connection (probably expecting me to call again at to number that costs money?) or is the Indian "Microsoft Technical Support" (I must have a lot of virus). It can also be a legitimate insurance companies, or callers from red cross etc.
If I take my phone, I generally just answer with the following line. "No! I am not interested. You may not call this number. Take me off you list". And then I close the line. I do feel it actually started to lower the amount of spam calls after I started saying that.
But mostly I do NOT answer my phone if I don't know the number, or expects a call. I check my email once a day. At most. Same with SMS. I generally leave my phone at my desk when walking around the office. Same at home.
It is fascinating to realize that I am more difficult than ever to get a hold on.
I don't answer the phone from unknown callers simply because of spammers.
Not because I think emoji and animated gifs are "rich and wonderful"... Seriously?
My solution?
If you're not in my contact list, I'm not answering.
If it's important, leave a message.
If you call me more than twice and don't leave a message, your number is blocked...
Um, you do release that you can literally block specific numbers from calling your ever again on Android and block unidentified calls. There are even ways so that only your contacts can make your phone rings.
This all sound like a personal problem to me and not a society problem.
I'm older (43) and still tend to answer the phone. But, one thing I do see is that people who don't like talking to people feel they don't have to anymore. There's other non-voice options.
This is especially true in workplaces, where the younger crowd is finally starting to reach the supervisory levels. In tech shops it's all Slack, Teams, IM of one form or another, texting, etc. I actually find myself preferring this, even though I know it's not normal.
I'm not an antisocial nerd, but I'm also not a type-A salesy extrovert either. Talking to people on the phone means uncomfortable small talk, having to manage the conversation, etc. Sending a to-the-point message is much more useful to me. I know extroverts probably love the small talk aspect, but it's something I can live without if I can get my information without it.
SIP is the reason why phones are now completely stuffed. By dropping the price of international calls to literally $0.00 (simply an international SIP trunk.) It meant that all spammers have to do is control a computer in the country they wish to dial into and all calls are free or as near to free as needed to justify the expense of making the calls. This could be fixed with carrier/vendor cooperation. But it won't happen.
The rest of the world picks up the phone like normal people do. Let them folk from the U.S. of A. keep on living in their own little reality world.
Like a tabloid stating "America thinks X!".
"America" didn't. But now everyone thinks America does. So everyone imitates that. So it becomes reality.
Sorry. Nice try. We all know that cheap trick now. Nobody's falling for it. (Yes, I can make broad statements too! ;)
Fact is, that I do not see what you claim. Around here, everybody picks up their phone (which includes Signal), or meets, or is left out of our community. Their choice.
So if what you claim is even true where you live, nuke that place from orbit. It's the only way to be sane.
Yet another reason I never answer my cell phone. As OP pointed out, most calls are telemarketers and most of the voice mails they leave are in English. Starting about a month ago I've started getting voice mails in Chinese. What's up with that? I'd at least have expected Spanish before Chinese.
I have quit answering my phone when it rings and it is a call because:
A) It is 99.999999999% likely, of course give or take a 0.00000001 percentage margin of error, to be spam
And my spam I mean SCAM.
Half of those spam calls are telemarketers from India offering me my own job for half to a third of the pay. I have had bosses even admit that this was them trying to replace me, but not to worry because "see there isn't anybody, that's why they called you!"
The other half want to sell me some kind of insurance.
And occasionally I've won an amazing vacation cruise to:
A) Wherever I tell the guy I want to go
B) For free, they just picked me at random
C) But first I have to give them my social security number and confirm my credit card number
Hey Democrats, Is Meuller going to investigate this, after? Or did he do this before? I can't tell, the results are about the same.
still no "news" about FBI spy Professor Stefan Halper. And you think you can make telemarketers stop calling? What a bunch of libtards! Buy your mandated products and services and be quiet. AE911Truth org
Texting is fun, lightly asynchronous, and possible to do with many people simultaneously.
I find texting to be a distracting pain in the ass, and if a text thread goes beyond a few messaged in the space of an hour, I'm either placing a call or dropping the thread. Texting is a thoroughly inefficient way of communicating when compared with two-way speech, even if you don't consider that it's WAY harder to text and do something else than it is to talk and do something else.
... words mixed with emoji, Bitmoji, reaction gifs ...
I hate those damned things - they're un-subtle, annoying, tacky, and cheesy. Fortunately, I only get stuck with Emoji - I had to look up the other two for this comment. And if THEY start showing up, I'm going back to a flip phone.
Texting definitely has its uses, and I appreciate what it brought to the party; but it is in NO WAY a substitute for talking, and any graphic elements beyond specific and personal pictures and videos are the ugly garden trolls and velvet paintings of the smartphone world. Now get off of my lawn, dammit!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
....if I don't know the number. Too many spam calls, scam calls, political calls. If you're not in my phone list, F**K OFF.
I grew up in the 70s - I don't remember getting many telephone calls. If I did and they were local, they were very short because you would see the person soon again anyway. If it was long distance, which cost a lot back then, you didn't stay on the phone for hours. A 10 minute call was normal.
The reason we picked up the phone is there was no caller id, and no voice mail. Also there was no spam calling (much) back then. And no other options except letter writing to get in touch.
Today is just fine - a quick text to check on something, email for a bit longer correspondence, video or phone conversation for even longer discussions. Amazing the options you have. Believe me I don't want to go back to rotary dial phones and hand writing or typing letters.
Telephony is a slow, inefficient medium for the basics of communicating information.
You want me to do something, or tell me something, email me. Text me if I'm mobile, but email will get through. It'll also all be "on the record".
If you don't want it on the record, I don't want to hear it.
At work I have an advertised direct line and I also get calls from a switchboard. I can summarise every phone call I get into a handful of categories:
- People who have techy problems who haven't emailled / ticketed them. Sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's because they want to avoid admitting fault, it's NEVER because they couldn't just email/ticket them.
- People I don't want trying to sell me things.
- People I already buy things from "checking in" to see if I've happened to completely forget their existence, acquire several major and important and expensive projects, but just never asked them.
- Convenience calls: "Your parcel is at the front desk", etc.
Personally, I don't even have a landline, because it was always just sales. My mobile phone, however gets these calls:
- People who don't know me.
Everyone else texts, WhatsApps, emails, Facebooks or whatever.
Voice calls are no good for remembering things ("Let me just write that down" / "Can you email me that number"), they are no good for conveying most information ("Send me the spreadsheet", "could you take a photo so I can see"), they take much longer to convey whatever information (which is an advantage if, say, it's a friend calling, but still much better to do in person), and they rely on you both being available to talk simultaneously to the point that one of you has to interrupt the other one most of the time.
Voice calls are an antiquity. It's like a hand-written letter. You use them to "feel", not to communicate. And most use of them is with people you don't want to "feel" with. That guy at Dell might want to generate a rapport with me, but I don't want that.
And the only calls I make are to "feel". Either express my frustration at lack of service, talk to friends, etc.
Don't even get me started on video calls.
Are we reaching you?
*click*
President Trump will fix this, and make telemarketing great again.
By appealing to Americans sense of Patriotism, Stupidity, and Greed, qualities Americans have in excess!
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Not answering the phone is a violation of Freedom! You like Freedom, don't you? Remember, we are the leaders of the Free World, all other countries will follow our shining example!
I set my default ringtone to silent, and give ringtones to those I know.
Sign up for the Do Not Call list, I've not gotten marketing calls in years (or maybe decades).
Tone of voice gets lost in text miscommunication.
There was a study I recall pointing out most emoji are misinterpreted by the recipient. There's a whole new variety of smilies with stuff on their faces that I have no idea what it's supposed to represent, or what the user intended by it. They just get ignored completely. My SO I just tell I don't know what they meant. If it matters they explain.
But the big thing as I age, reading texts requires finding a pair of glasses. Instead of spending an hour back and forth, it's far easier to resolve all issues in a single two minute phone call.
Driving. I can legally be on a phone call whilst driving. Voice to text works well on Android, horribly useless on iOS.
If I donâ(TM)t know who is calling and they donâ(TM)t leave a voicemail I wonâ(TM)t call back. If they do it multiple times I block them.
no, no,, team me gets to control my perception of the world by making all bad interactions go away. I can pick my news provider between mainstream democrat, left wing, progressive, or retarded, I don't respond to text messages, email, IM, slack or voice mail that might be uncomfortable, and I avoid iconversing in person unless I know that the person I'm talking to won't offend me. I also see no value in appointments or any demonstration of respect for other people's time, to the extent that I don't even notice that other people show up on time.
And that is why I went to an airline, because that shit isn't tolerated and those people get tossed fast. Ticket agent or gate agent has an issue, I stay on the phone with her until it's resolved, unless i need to call someone else for help. Dispatch has an issue? I call them and ask what they need to get done and what they're seeing, instead of IM'ing them. Much more efficient, much more human, much more caring as a group than I dealt with in the rest of the software industry. And it's not "millenials", it's spoiled children of unaccountable Gen-X'ers
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What?
Except for e-mail: no, not one of them. And none of their alternatives either. None at all. And I'm really happy about it, and I don't plan to change anything about it. Yes, I work in IT.
And no, I don't use the telephone much, either.
On the other hand, in some countries including mine – as others already have reported here – the telephone is still functional, as telephone spammers are being reliably persecuted and fined. The few spammers which still come through, disguising themselves as opinion research institutes or some such or perhaps actually being one, who knows, can easily be blocked in the phone system...
Maybe occasionally. Most of the time it's a royal PITA.
Texting is slower than Morse code for most people. The tiny keyboard that phone include make it near impossible to do anything more complicated than sending messages like "Wot U doin" without misspelling just about every word. Texting seems to be the beyond-the-grave revenge of the guy who invented the "If u cn rd ths u cn get a gud job..." ads you used to see in the back of magazines.
Texting is highly asynchronous. OK... I can send a message multiple people with a text but, guess what, you can do the same thing with a modern mobile phone: add another person to a phone call. Sending "I will be late" to a group using texting is great. Texting back and forth with that same group where to meet for dinner is excruciatingly slow. Texting has got to be at least an order of magnitude slower for communications than the human voice will ever be.
Texting does have one advantage over a phone call: it's slightly less of a disruption. A brief beep isn't the annoyance that a ringtone can be in a meeting. The worst part of that brief annoyance, though, is that once someone sends you a text, they nearly always expect you to text them back, no matter how complex your response is going to be. Try calling them back because your response is better done via actually using the phone to talk and they'll let your call go to voice mail.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Back in the day, before electronic bill payment, we would get all of our bills via mail carrier and sit down and write paper checks to pay them. We would check the mailbox every day because there might be something important in there.
Electronic bill payment has replaced all of those paper bills so what are we left with? My mailbox is filled almost entirely with junk mail. Outside of Christmas cards I get almost nothing of value. So I don't feel the need to check the mailbox every day like I used to.
Phone calls are becoming like that too. The vast majority are from people I don't know trying to sell me something I don't need. Unless I recognize the number I simply ignore it. I wish we could have the equivalent of a junk mail filter for unwanted phone calls. Unless the incoming call is from someone in my contact list then don't even ring the phone. And then have it send a fingernails-on-blackboard screech back into the ear of the caller. And jam the callers line so they can't make any other calls from that phone for at least an hour.
When a real person calls me and not some spoofed robo dialer.
Born in 1970, so grew up in that telephone-centric time, and I stopped answering the phone years ago. It’s definitely the sales calls that I hate. Even in the office I get 2-3 calls a day that never leave a voice mail. I know it’s a vendor that wants to sell something.
You guys are still paying for incoming calls, right? Here in Europe everyone picks up their phone, all the time, always. If we don't want to be called by a certain number we just add it to the blocking list.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Our DO Not Call law inserted two exceptions beyond emergency calls
1. Politicians and polling people can call you unsolicited
2. Anyone you had a previous bussiness relationship or contact with can call.
The last one is really abused. Say you start to buy an electric fur lined shaving mug on etsy but then change your mind at the "confirm this purchase" step. You just had a bussiness relationship where you provided contact info.
Next they sell your info to some broker who sells it to 1000 other people who are now considered "affiliates" of the original transaction. SO they have standing to call on the do-not-call list.
The final problem is that phone companies all want to monetize their role in preventing you from dreading the phone ringing. Just as Ring tones were not free but were costless to provide, they want to charge you for allowing you to benefit from their curated blacklists. And they want to sell free passes one the blacklists (whitelisting) to people who pay them. They could do this for free as it's nearly costless.
SO basically the phone companies are working hard to make you hate your phone.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
But seriously, I don't answer calls from unknown sources. They get sent to voicemail. Next, I check the voice mail and if it is indeed someone I never want to talk to I add the number to my contact called Shit List. There are about 300 numbers in that contact. I chose an excellent image to use for the "Shit List" caller: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9f/6...
One of the reasons I don't answer the phone is simply If your told something over the phone and then later this message is disputed for what ever reason there are no logs. (even if phones are recorded, that is normally a hassle to get access to)
With just about all other forms of communication there are logs and and you can prove that you didn't screw up it was your incompetent co worker. Which for me was every other week...
The spammers/scammer and robo callers operators should be subject to the death penalty on conviction.
My telephone like is probably 10-15 a months for voice and sms. If i want voicemail and caller Id its 10 more.. I probably send 5 texts and get 4 calls a months. sms is needed for 2fa, voice because the Uber driver is lost.
Being a tech worker I generally don’t like the phone because it results in me answering excessive questions that do not help solve the problem.. and usually have to perform additional work after the call to satisfy some ones curiosity... AND having to explain details to people who can not help solve the problem at hand.
Communication methods with a shared audience can often be helpful,in preventing this.
Ever since we set up FreePBX on a SIP provider and created an IVR menu (press 1 for blah, press 2 for blah, etc), we have received 0 spam calls. They can't press the buttons and get hung up on after a few seconds. If you have reliable broadband and a spare PC laying around, you can set this up in place of existing landlines and most likely will be able to port your existing numbers to it. Cell phones can be used as extensions with it, but it doesn't actually change the way your existing number works and since we pay for mobile data here in the States, that can get expensive quick.
FreePBX can be difficult to set up unless you use one of the pre-configured Linux distros. In hindsight, I wish I had used that instead of trying to get FreePBX running on an existing Linux install. Once FreePBX is running, theres a not-too-bad learning curve to configuring it to your SIP provider(s) and extension(s). Once you're that far in, the IVR menu setup isn't too bad.
To deal with spammers on my cell, I installed an app that sends incoming calls straight to voicemail if they're not in my contacts. Works pretty well.
I'm not just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, I might be eating a meal or sitting with friends, or in the middle of work.
And there's no reason for me to drop everything just because someone picked this arbitrary point in time to have a conversation.
... to fewer calls to businesses.
I love chat.
I can multitask during the session; resolution is mostly timely, and both parties can get on with their day.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I told them to get out of their desk and walk to the customer's desk
B...b...but I'm sitting in Starbucks right now.
Have gnu, will travel.
Fucking stupid nerds
I have never liked the phone, for one simple reason: a phone call is an interruption. The caller is interrupting me, and unless I'm calling a call centre, I'm interrupting someone else. I worked in a call centre for a while, both making and taking calls, and saw how massively inefficient the whole call handling business is; all the wasted time and frustration that goes along with that.
Apart from prearranged calls, I now view phone calls as for emergencies only, mostly for things that genuinely cannot wait and which justify interrupting someone else's work. Nearly everything we do does not fall in to that category.
(this is not a
As the customer, I'd prefer the email or text.
You send someone to give me a status update? So no matter what I'm currently doing, now I have to devote 100% of my attention to this person.
With an email or text, I can read it when I choose to, it isn't interrupting something I'm working on, etc.
Gee, thanks for that IN PERSON update.
I have a Government issued phone. On it too 95% of the rings are spammers, scammers and telemarketers. If caller ID doesn't pop with one of my contacts, I don't answer. The number is on the do-no-call registry - which really should be call the do-nothing registry because that's really the effect.
I never answer it and have distinctive ring enabled to send known robocallers to the dead zone. Anyone else gets voice mail. Anyone who would actually need to get in touch calls my cell (which I guard closely) or email/SMS. Every once in a while I'll pick up a robo just to fuck with them for entertainment and to waste their time, but otherwise it just rings silently.
In the US, the people have been convinced that all business regulations are bad. The US is, in many ways, a pretty rotten place to live. Our infrastructure is shit. Our health care is only good if you're rich. You're more likely get shot here than in any other modern country. Poverty is rampant and extreme. Bribery is 100% legal in our government.
So yes, there are no laws restricting junk phone calls because the phone companies (of which there are really only about 3) have paid the government not to make those laws.
I don't respond to AC's.
I rarely see a spammer reuse a number so I don't see blocking to be effective. If someone calls me twice in a row, I'll probably pickup.
Thanks grandad
I was looking through the comments just to see if anyone mentions a white list filter app. I've got one on my phone and it only lets it ring for people in my contact list.
Maybe someone can help me out here. Voicemail doesn't seem to help with phone spam much. The spam callers usually leave a voice message but it's just empty. I haven't figured out a way of filtering these out. That means that I actually have to play it to realize that it's spam. So, each spam call costs me around 20 seconds of my life in terms of opening phone, listening for a few seconds, and blocking the phone number if it's spam. There are... what..... 10 billion phone numbers in the U.S. alone? I could block spam calls for a full hour a day and not make headway. I'm pretty sure the spammers switch phone numbers on a regular basis?
Dealing with email spam is far easier. I can delete the 25 spam messages I get each day in under 15 seconds.
The obvious proper policy is making your contacts list a whitelist. For every form of communication.
Ideally with a graylist for contacts of your contacts, so you don't become a social cripple like too many kids nowadays.
I had that setup since 2003.
As long as you add the number of business contacts into your contacts list (in a separate group), so e.g. your doctor can call you, it works without problems.
Just ask them what number they will be calling with.
And block anonymois calls.
Although maybe it works so well here in Germany, because we all have caller id (or whatever you call it), so you barely ever get a call without a number. Also, my whitelist supported wildcards, to allow all internal numbers of a company.
If you're not in my contact list, I'm not answering.
I'm hoping Apple shows some sort of "If not in my contact list don't ring" type of setting for iOS on Monday.
What I've done is whitelist people on my contacts. I've told them not to call unless they really need to get my attention. That way, if I hear my ringer go off, I know I *really* need to answer. It solves the spam issue, but if someone is stranded and using a phone number I haven't listed, that will be an issue.
Looking at the caller ID: "Well, if you're unavailable, then I'm unavailable."
You never expect irony, do you?
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If it's not from a number I recognize I don't answer the phone. If they don't leave a voicemail of some sort then it must not have been important, or it was just some scam call I would have hung up on anyway. Too many abuses of the telephone system anymore, has been this way for at least 20 years or so. Frankly if I thought I could get along completely without a phone then I wouldn't even have one at all.
The classic telephone system is hopelessly outdated. It turned into a spam-town.
Please, if you need to call me for the first time, send me an SMS, or WhatsUp, or e-mail message first with a short explanation of the topic. I pick up a phone call only from phone numbers in my contacts.
I'd say it is a consequence of faster and faster change. There's the often cited fear of "missing out", but it also must be coupled with that "5+/- 2" thing: we really cannot cope with so many channels.
There's also the opportunity gains: while we should previously accept our immediate circle with obnoxious "friends", it is now possible to push less-than-ideal people to a corner and focus on the ones we admire -- or like. Insensitive as this might be, not everyone is able to live on higher moral values.
It follows that such people are way easy to manipulate, if one can sweeten the pill well enough. It's possible to profit from frustrations, anxiety and other problems to make people move in the desired direction. Governments block social media in an attempt to protect the feeble ones.
Not answering the phone is just a symptom of a larger issue. In my personal dealings, I've found it's too hard to change the world and I'm considering ways to (a) avoid falling for this trap and (b) cope with the present situation the better I can. Not all of this is easy, but the results are promising.
Unfortunately, it's more or less like going with the wind... you end up in good places, but not exactly where you'd want to be. There's a sadness, too, about having to depart -- but that is part of being unable to change the world.
Not uncommon scenario: you make a support call to an Indiana number routed to India. After the incident is escalated, they ask for some time and say they will call you back. No one on that end knows what number will come up or even if it will always be the same number.
Text has the same immediacy as a voice call, but it doesn't have to interrupt what you're doing. You also know what the caller wants before getting back to that person, which makes spam a lot less common and more easily spoofed.
Answer your phone with a muted microphone.
Human callers will issue their confused "Hello?" calls into the void, identifying themselves as authentic.
Software could easily note speech on the other end, note an unexpected mid-call termination (you hung up) marking your number as a legitimate (and more importantly, active) data point. This is valuable information internally, maybe even enough to sell.
Even a voice synth "Hello." isn't that hard to identify. Answer muted, put the phone away, let the robot rant until it hangs up.
I just don't understand how you can have spam calls like that and be ok with it. Is it an american thing?
1a: People sued the spammers in civil courts for various damages and started winning.
1b; Some states passed anti-phone-spam laws, some of which made it easier to sue and win defined amounts for defined misbehavior. Ramp up 1a.
2: Telemarketers lobbied congress to get these suits off their backs and out of their business models.
3: Congress responded with the can-spam act. It purported to regulate, and criminalize some classes of, telemarketing spam nationally (while protecting others - such as political campaign calls. polls, charities, and businesses who could claim a relationship with the calle), block even those to cell phones (which, at the time, typically charged high by-the-minute rates even on incoming calls), and create a national do-not-call list that the telemarketers had to respect.
But it also preempted state laws and civil suits. You had to appeal to the feds for enforcement.
4: State level prosecutions and civil suits stopped.
5: People appealed to the feds for enforcement.
6:
7: Telemarketers figured this out and ramped up their calls.
8: PROFIT!
9: Telemarketers started ignoring the do-not-call list with impunity.
10: MORE PROFIT!
11: Telemarketers figured out how to spoof caller ID and number blocking.
12: STILL MORE PROFIT!
13: Technology was developed to make the process cheaper to run:
13a: Boiler-room call-victim-first, call-phone-pimp-if-he-answers, drop-call-if-they're-all-busy systems.
13b: Improving tech to distinguish pickup from voicemail or failed call and keep the victim on the line: answer timing, phone SIT tone detection on call failures, voice recognition of "hello" and its analogs, canned prompts to hold interest, computer generated voice asking for the victim by name.
13c: Full-bore scripted or AI cyber-phone-pimps. (Why pay humans to staff a boiler room when you can buy software and computers for far less?)
14: PROFIT, PROFIT, PROFIT!
15: Customers tried to get the phone companies to do something to mitigate the problem, or disconnect the phone-spammers.
16:
17: Academic estimates how much the phone carriers earn per year delivering phone spam: (If I recall correctly: many billions - not quite a trillion - per year.)
18: PROFIT for phone carriers, too.
19: Switching carriers doesn't help because they are required to connect calls from other networks and (with the source spoofed) can't distinguish the spam calls.
20: Customers give up.
So it's not that we're OK with it. We're not. It's just that the Washington swamp rats got bought a few years back and right now we've got no leverage - other than doing our best to throw the rascals out and drain the swamp.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
6: and 16: were supposed to be <the sound of crickets> but I forgot to escape the angle brackets.
But a blank line works almost as well, doesn't it? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We've moved from POTS with SS7, which for all its detriments at least allowed you to locate the SOB who was calling you and arrest them, to SIP. How many different implimentations are there of SIP? Hundreds. And some of the components of SIP, like codecs, are proprietary and will probably at this point forever be under patent or copyright.
I have a phone system at work I bought from my ISP. You'd think they'd configure a throughput reserve for QOS Traffic? Nope. I have to escalate to an account manager for this and waste all sorts of time troubleshooting and complaining because I've got a 7% call drop rate on a MPLS tunnel with QOS on a SLA.
Most of these robocalls are coming out of India or China, and why do we put up with THAT? Why do we put up with "remote work" from india and China? Why do we tolerate call centers being moved to the phillipines? Where's the great Firewall of America? At one ISP, the management was daft enough to try to have account managers in the phillipines help me first; that did not last long, they were not able to do the needful. They also lost that contract. And had over $100k of equipment shipped to us that sat for a year because they tried it with their logistics people and didn't think through a piolet program.
Do Cellphones generally have the ability to assign a ringtone to a group of people? No. Even the most basic functionality. You'd think the contact list would've changed in the last 20 years since Outlook 97. It hasn't. But it has a nice new GUI front-end and search feature in windows now. FFS.
This is all a symptom of a telephone system that is so badly mismanaged that people are now abandoning it for something, anything, else.
This is what software defined telephony looks like.
Problem is that's just what they are doing so now you have to sift through dozens or more of telemarketers voicemails. And Blocking doesn't do a damn thing at all, the blocked numbers are also forwarded to voicemail..
Jack of all trades,master of none
That's really inefficient, and will probably anger customers in the long run.
If I was the customer, I'd expect an in-person visit to mean they're done. Send me a text/email/call while you're working on it, as it's minimally intrusive.
I'd probably assume the tech was goofing off if they came out to me. Maybe they wanted to chat with friends along the way so they used it as an excuse to walk all the way to my desk just to give an update; when they could still be at their desk working on my stuff.
I'm fine with taking breaks, and clearing your head a bit to look at the problem in a new light. But, your method would just piss me off.
And then only have the phone ring for someone in your contact list. It'll make your life a lot easier.
The main reason I don't answer is it's usually work calling. Whether it's my turn on call or not, we have so much on call emergencies, and they often last like 12 hours or more, they call the rest of us for backup. It's exhausting. And when you don't answer, they start texting. "Oh, can you help? So-n-so has already been working it for 12 hours." And then you find out it was the customer's networking vendor that screwed it up with some un-planned, un-approved change that broke the vessel or multiple vessels, and there was nothing we could have done to fix it, anyway... all we did is diagnose their problem for them. Hell, they even call during vacation. Am I the only one experiencing this?
This sig intentionally left blank.
Yeah, that all depends on the end-user. Some end-users never really reply to our emails, aren't at their desks, etc. The higher up the chain the worse it gets; but honestly it's not because their rude but they just are super-busy, deluged with email already, etc. That's when the "unwritten institutional knowledge" comes in handy, to know which users will quickly answer emails and which are better off just going up to their desks.
Plus, physically going up to users often reinforces that IT are "real people" in the same building, build rapport, and helps establish those very important internal business / social connections. If IT is friendly and helpful with the users, the users will usually do the same. Also, having some written procedures that say "if no response, call user; if no answer or call back after XX time, go to their desk." or such.
You must be hallucinating, my friend. People make and receive family and business calls every day. The only advantage of other media is the option to delay/slow down the comms.
I'm 46 and so also from the generation that was conditioned to pick up a ringing phone. But the reason I still do it today is because of what "swb" says here. There are too many situations where a real time voice conversation gets something resolved efficiently, where the other methods just don't.
With IM and texting, the parties aren't a "captive audience". They can carry on the conversation at their leisure, while doing and thinking about other things. I can't get a quick resolution if it's not a simple yes or no type question.
Just last week, I needed to get some changes made to my Sirius/XM subscription. Tried the online chat but it was too slow and frustrating. It was resolved quickly by calling and and just explaining what I wanted to do. Same with updating my car insurance. The original quote I requested prompted me to ask about several other things on the policy, and everything was sorted out in a single phone call. I tried to text message my agent initially, but he only paid attention to the first item I asked about and didn't answer my other questions.
I hear younger people constantly saying they just don't talk on the phone anymore, and would often get rid of the phone number and voice portion of their cellphone if they could do it and save money on the bill. That saddens me, because they don't realize what they're giving up. The telephone was a great invention because it allowed vocal communication between distant parties. Everything else you can do on a cellphone today is just "pocket computer" stuff. And throughout the history of the computer, a telephone has still been a useful device to have along-side of one. Videoconferencing tools like Skype and Zoom do blur the lines. But still, a telephone call is a more simple, direct way to establish the communications link.
I don't like phonecalls because they disrupt what you're doing...
A text message or email sits in the inbox until you are free to deal with it.
I unfortunately deal with many people who insist on phonecalls, often for really stupid things like just repeating exactly the same thing i've already said on email, or to ask me questions which i don't have the answer for and am only able to say "i'll look that up and email you the answer", they usually wont even give me a list of questions in advance of the call so i can ensure i have the information to hand so it all ends up a colossal waste of everyone's time.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I'm NOT against nor call nor email... I'm against people who do not know how to use them.
Many mails I got seems to be written in Klingon language by someone who think I can read
his/shes mind. For many of them I have a simple rule: no response, by any medium. For
the few I have to respond I'll try to do my best to explain why the hell I can't read mind's
nor I can solve any problem in any area in a snap...
I don't usually pick up the phone because nobody I care about calls me. They text me one way or another. The only things that call me a robots pretending to be human.
Phone rings
Me: Hello? *pause* Hello?
Bot: Hello, my name is Botsy MacBotsface, and I'm calling you from SpamFuckers Ltd. Our records indicate that you've been involved in an accident that wasn't your fault. Is that right?
Me: *complete silence*
I just go silent and let the bot hang up. I don't even hand up on it, as that may be an indication that I exist.
Screwup: A colleague coughed while in the "silent" stage above and the bot understood "yes", so it continued with the script:
Bot: When did that happen?
Me: *silence*
Bot: Hello? *pause* *hangup*
But now I wonder if I could just answer every question by making a noise, and if a real human follows up, I do that to them too.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
and even then, I hardly answer any calls!
Now to send egg plant pics to my colleague Pooja in the next cubicle to me in Mumbai.
Why do you think what you have to say is so important that I should drop everything and talk to you immediately? If I answer your call someone better be dieing.
As I grew up, etiquette was to allow 10 rings. That’s a whole minute to answer the phone. I often leave my cell in the bedroom as I go about my morning. Or in the livingroom when I’m home and about the house. This is less than 40 feet. I start to walk to my phone and folks have hung up before I get there. In the Internet age, we expect 1/4 second response times, so it seems intolerably long to wait even 15 seconds for someone to answer when you call. And the hesitation to see it ring twice before answering so as not to seem anxious or just hanging waiting for a call combined with the digital intolerance makes the window for answering or expecting an answer very short.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
+1
What I'm reading from people here is: "I'm too important to be bothered with having to actually talk to a person. The world revolves around my schedule and preferences; everyone else can just wait until I'm willing to communicate."
But I bet when you call a company, you expect a real person to answer the phone and talk to you.
In my area, you get a random number dialer (two of my phones are close, and A will always ring before B a few minutes later), so blocking in advance won't work. It is a business line, so you CANNOT whitelist. The CID ranges from an Apple Store local number to MS service center....pick up results in a quick handoff complete with "non US" phone noise. You then end up in the call center, which usually has a non english primary accent, or often "brit english". I will act old, and somewhat demented. (just like reality) and get things wrong. The key is act sufficently that it takes them a while to realize they are being baited. Toss in some racist or anti-religious nonsense while you're at it... I still have a fax machine. If they have a callback # I will just leave the machine on autodial. The machine will bang back at them for hours at a time, and many of the millenials don't know what a fax recogniton beeeep is. IF I SAVED ONE OLD PERSON, IT'S ALL WORTH IT.
The system to put an end to this should be possible. I should be able to use a simple code, *## to tag the prior call as spam. The best information available about the caller should go to the FTC and the spam blocking function of the telecom.
If you make the process harder than a second or two, you are going to drop your complaint rate by a factor of 100.
I suppose in the US, the FCC would have to authorize a telecom charge of $X a month, and require it to be effectively deployed to block spam. If there is no cash flow for it, it won't get done.
I don't answer it. I get hit with 4-5 "spam" calls a day. Truecaller app knocks most of them down. The problem with the "do not call" list is these clowns use fake numbers. Pretty easy to figure them out...the area code and prefix are usually the same as my phone number. Morons think that makes it easier to get through? Nope, just makes my block list longer.
I do not pick up nor call back numbers I do not recognize. If you have a reason to call, leave a damn message or you'll be blocked.
Since the US has failed to regulate spam and scam calls and those call a typically person here twice a day, phone calls are simply not going to be answered by the majority of people.
People are being trained to answer at their convenience. One of the greatest parts of SMS, email, etc. is that we can pick and choose when to answer and consider how we answer.
One of the best features on my personal phone is the Do Not Disturb setting. If you are not in my contacts it does not ring. My work number is a call forwarding system which similarly dumps people to a mailbox if they are not clients or other known business contacts. I am amused how younger people often text my work number as initial contact. It's fine but an odd first impression.
I see issues at work all day long that can be solved with a 30s phone call, instead of multiple email messages back and forth. Sometimes you just need to PICK UP THE DAMN PHONE AND CALL SOMEONE!
At least local ones. Always get an answering computer, where it's impossible or damned difficult to talk to a person, which is what I want to do. If I want to talk to a local business, I get in the car and drive to their place of business and walk in the door.
Don't answer calls, either, unless I know exactly who it is. Friends, businesses I have business with, I answer. Everyone else gets ignored. Rarely get a voicemail.
Easy solution to this - charge $0.50 / call for all calls, like mailing a letter. Problem solved overnight.
hell no!!!, ill be sure they are aware im planning to bang their mothers that same night
My younger brother, ladies and gentlemen. Drive me up the wall. It is about 1 in 50 calls when he actually picks up.
I've lived in Israel and in the Netherlands. I've experienced an occasional spam call suggesting that I donate to some religious initiative, and some calls regarding mortgage insurance or similar financial services; so, I'd say about 0.2%-0.3% of calls were proper spam. In the Netherlands I've not gotten spam calls at all (although, to be honest, very few entities had my number anyway). There were some calls asking for participation in public opinion surveys, which I wouldn't quite call spam and occasionally I even oblige.
This is not nearly enough to make you consider not answering your phone. Almost everyone I know answers their phone if they're physically able to.
I've also visited other countries - mostly in Europe - and my limited experience has been similar, i.e. no spam calls or so few that I don't notice them.
This pretty much does sum the problem up. Another factor, though, is that the amount of time we have to spend on phone calls that probably aren't even legitimate has dropped drastically.. We all have less free time than ever before. If we know there's a 90 percent chance that our time will be wasted with a spam call, there is no way we're going to waste that precious time.
That's literally everybody's work-around, you've stated nothing insightful here. But it is not a solution. The problem continues unabated.
Seems like I get a great deal of spam calls. Probably need to look into how to get them fined for it.
We invented phones to get away from writing letters and sending telegrams. Now, we're writing letters and sending telegrams again.
Here it is. 98% of the calls weren't even picked up. That's the problem.
The reason they do this is because it's cost effective. All the ineffective parts are automated, then a real person usually comes on for the last part.
Now, imagine if those 98% who didn't pick up, did. Go through the call, put it on speaker phone and make it a joke among friends (if you actually have friends IRL, that is.)
If everyone answered the call, got to the person and had a conversation, then the overwhelming cost of all that would end the practice. It would no longer be cost effective.
We're seven billion strong. They are only a handful of miscreants. They can't win if we band together, bit the bullet and make it suck to be them.
Here's how the conversation typically goes:
them: [the whatever pitch]
me: I'm sorry, what company did you say you're from?
them: The credit security department
me: Department of what company?
them: That's the name of the company.
me: What company?
them: The credit security company, I'm calling today because ...
me, interrupting: Whoa! Slow down. I'm old and can't hear that fast. Can you start over?
etc... Play a game with them. It only takes a couple of minutes of your time, but they have a limited number of phone lines, and every second we take impacts their ability to call other victims. We can protect our most vulnerable and end this scourge it we all TAKE THE CALL and MAKE IT LAST. But by all means, DO NOT give away any personal information, and don't buy anything.
If we would all Take The Call, within a year there won't be any more calls.
Join me.
If you find texting exciting and phone calls boring, you need new friends.
The PSTN is a cesspool of spammers, scammers, frauds, imposters, and cheats looking to con you and I out of our hard-earned money. Federal regulation and the common carriers are just as much the culprits as the bogus callers for letting it get this way. The only way it changes is if we can apply a reputation system to it (voluntary or involuntary) to favor our personal contacts and distance ourselves from the garbage calls and texts. Curb your natural human curiosity and don't answer calls from numbers you don't recognize. If they don't leave voice mail then it probably wasn't that important, was it? Keep your contacts list current. There may be instances where you may be expecting a call from an unknown number. Mentally compartmentalize that call and be prepared to hang up if it isn't who you think it might be. Don't give away any personal info if you don't recognized the caller. Use a secure messaging platform in place of voice calls or text messages. Encrypting "data in motion" goes a long way towards protecting your privacy. Maybe it's time to update the "8 Simple Rules".
8 Simple Rules For NOT Dialing My Number:
1. If you're selling something, don't call me. Period. If I want something, I'll call you.
2. If you're a politician or a pollster, don't call me. Period. I don't care if you're protected by the Do Not Call List. That legislation was damaged goods when it passed into law.
3. If I don't recognize your number you're going to voice mail. Get over it and leave a message.
4. If Caller ID is blocked, missing, or obviously spoofed you're going to voice mail. Get over that, too, and leave a message.
5. Every carrier should have the ability and facility in this day and age to "Back Bill" any call, anywhere. If a "boiler room," or even my own mother, calls me I should be able to dial "*BACB" (or something similar) and charge them some nominal amount for the call to the device that I'm paying the bill for if I don't want them contacting me.
6. Spoofing Caller ID information should be considered Wire Fraud and, therefore, illegal.
7. I'm paying for my air time on my cellular phone even when you call me, that makes it trespassing if I don't want you there and I should be able to prosecute you if you become a nuisance.
8. Unsolicited Text Messages are no different from Unsolicited Voice Calls and therefore no exception to the above rules.
9. Bonus Rule: Wireless carriers should enact voluntary number blocking/filtering systems with no arbitrary limits (like, say, MORE than 5 numbers, Verizon Wireless) with Opt-IN policies (NOT Opt-OUT) for scam services like Premium Text Messages.
If the calling number does not show up in your personal directory or you do not recognize it, do not engage the call, curb your natural curiosity and let it go to voice mail. These are the new rules for protecting yourself against the Public Switched Telephone Network.
I keep seeing this come up in the comments. It occurs to me to wonder... What criteria are you using to define efficiency? If it's words transacted per minute, then yes, a call is more efficient. If it's meaningful information transacted per minute, telephones suck ass.
I would rather receive a text than a physical interruption...er...follow up visit. If someone knocks on my office door than I am forced to answer it. Horrible!!! Even in cubicle hell that would be annoying. Just text me to find out if all is well. Why waste time?
Now everyone is glued to the smart phone, there is an expectation that you will be available to receive a phone call any time any place. If you don't answer or call back it used to be assumed that maybe you were out and would get it later. Now, it is assumed you are just "not answering the phone".
SPAM calls are really the reason.
Many have pointed out legislation to prevent this. However at least in my country, there are often large loopholes left for business. So while I'll get pure spam every now again again, most of it is from some company with whom I already have some service with who are exempt (Cable, Internet, Phone, Electrical, Gas, Charities, etc) who will try to constantly up-sell you whatever promotion they are doing that week. So while Bell for example couldn't just cold call me if I wasn't already a customer, but once a customer they can seemingly call whenever they like. I've dropped charities for this exact reason as some once you are involved see it as a cart blanch to call and harass you for more money constantly. The Red Cross is another one, that once I gave blood, I now get vampire calls constantly...
About the only one who ever calls me anymore are my parents, and they have had the same phone number for like the last 40 years...
http://www.newser.com/story/26...
I almost always answer the phone, but do appreciate T-Mobile's spam filter which shows the name ID of suspect calls as "Scam Likely". Those tend to get ignored.
Nope, not relevant. I didn't get a phone until about 1994, and I never developed that reflex. Someone calls, I let it ring out then do a last-caller ID and if I recognise the number, call back and say I was on the shitter. If I don't recognise the number, no call back. It was never difficult, and got easier when I got a handset with a screen that displayed the incoming number.
OK, I was 31 when I started living with a phone - maybe other people developed different habits if they had a phone in their twenties or teens. But even so, it's just a habit, not a reflex.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"