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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'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.
I just don't understand how you can have spam calls like that and be ok with it.
I try to make the most of it: I ask them all about the area that their number shows them to be calling from ("Bruce" with an Indian accent apparently resides in Idaho).
I'll string them along for as long as I possibly can, giving them ever-varying versions of my "social security number" as I "struggle to remember it," etc, etc, until they give up in frustration.
The skies the limit, here; this is a sport with few rules.
When looking for a new job I always put on my CV/profile not to call me during office hours. It's a great way to filter crappy recruiters who don't read beyond keyword matches.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
In Europe caller pays, always. Also, in Europe we (usually, but depends on the country) have a no-spam-call list service, and whoever calls a number on that list gets fiercely fined.
I’m guessing the caller pays is a bigger deterent as it woukd be tough to find, let alone fine, some non-EU soammer in a third world call center. OTOH, getting billed for thousands of calls would greatly impact or wipe out any profit; or EU telcos simply do not connect calls because they can’t get needed payment data. Alternatively, I’d imagine language to be another barrier as there is no assurance the person called speaks the caller’s language, whereas in the US you are pretty certain of getting an English speaker most of the time.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.