Poor customer service

In recent years , we look at the cordless phone's Call Display to see the caller ID - it's so so easy to let it go to voicemail - if it's a weird number. My phone-scam-calls are almost all robo calls - .. again - easy to hang-up-on - it's a robo after all ! The quite-rare human caller just gets a polite " not interested bye " So easy. I avoid " having them on " because they may then submit my phone number to all their friends. John T.

snipped-for-privacy@ccanoemail.com wrote on 3/25/2024 7:49 PM:

I use cellphones. I told my service provider to disable voicemail (although voicemail is included with no extra charge). I don't answer the first time any phone call with a phone number not stored in my contact list. I found that spam/robocalls won't retry a second time if the first call wasn't answered, but a real person who really wanted to talk to me would ring again later.

Another way I handle spam/robocall is that if I answer a suspicious call, I wouldn't say anything and let the other side initiate the conversation. I found that a spam/robocall would hang up after a few seconds if I don't say anything, but if I say "Hello", then after a couple of seconds I would be transferred to a spammer, scammer or a recorded message.

Many say Spam Call and I ignore those. If I'm talking to them, they are not scamming some old lady at the moment.

I've also gotten quite a few calls for Accidental Claim Recovery. They say:We understand you'd been in an accident and have not been paid, we have attorneys that can help.

I tell them about my accident. I was parked in the lot at WalMart and the spot across from me was empty. A car pulled in, did not stop in time and hit me. That is how I got injured. My girlfriend was giving me a BJ and it scared her and she bit my dick.

Dammit Ed , I may not agree with you on some thing s but you sure can be one funny SOB !

I ask all the american health care scammers if they know 519 is anCANADION area code and we don't have to buy our insurance from scammers like them

Some days I have too much time. There are a few that hang up as soon as we connect. I guess I am on their "do not call" list.

Oh, I also get calls for the guy that had my number previously, so a good 6 years ago. One was Tropic Air, a legitimate business in the area, that services HVAC. I corrected them and they promised to fix it. Well, they did since on the 3rd call I just made an appointment and they showed up at his house.

I have a few favorites:

Cussing out one woman she said, I do not like your profanity. I said, If you do not like my profanity don't f****ng call me.

The guy at Publishers Central Bureau that told me I won three million dollars was hard to understand. After telling him this a couple of times, I asked him if there was a white person I could talk to. He went berserk.

Then there was the granddad call. I told the kid that I had no black grandsons.

My wife said I could be arrested for saying these things and I told her if I was, I would be a national hero.

Then there are the emails:

On 3/26/2024 12:08 AM, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: >

Last year I had one of the "grandparent scam" calls and I actually played-along for quite a while - acting like an elderly and slightly hard-of-hearing old fart. I was quite impressed with the acting ability of the caller - he spoke _exactly_ like a young man from rural or small town southwestern Ontario. At some point he got spooked <?> and disconnected the call - I was expecting a call-back from him or the "police officer" who was in charge but it never came. The one slight glitch in his story-line - when I asked what town's jail he was being held in - he took a minute and seemed to consult an accomplice before arriving at a reasonable nearby city. When I first picked up the phone and was greeted with a voice saying ~ " How are you doing Grandpa ? " I quickly replied " Is that you, Danny ? " giving him a good fake starting point to work with .. John T.

We do almost the same thing. We don't give out our cell phone numbers except to close relatives and financial institutions that use 2 part authentication. Our cell phones are usually turned off and our relatives know to use our land line number first. We have NOMOROBO (free for land lines) configured for our land line. Our wireless phones have a setting that we use that automatically mutes the first ring of every incoming call. If NOMOROBO blocks a call, we aren't even bothered by the first ring before the block is implemented. If our phone rings, we have the calls we know we want to pick up asap (relatives, doctors' offices, our Condo's front desk, etc.) coded for a different ring tone than all other calls. If the call is on the special ring tone, we don't even look at the caller ID screen before picking up. For all other calls, if convenient we look at the caller ID. If we recognize the caller we'll pick up. Unrecognized callers go to voice mail, which we screen after the caller hangs up. Comparing our telcom's phone log for our incoming calls to the number of times/day our phone rings, I'd guess that we get 5-20 blocked spam calls/day thanks to NOMOROBO. Of the unrecognized calls that ring through, maybe 2-3% leave a voice mail. All in all, we save lots of time and bother every day.

I thought about doing that as I have had the call a few times. A while back I strung a guy along like you did then clarified my voice and told him what I was doing wasting his time. He told me that I was old and did not have a lot of time left to waste. I agree. So now it is usually a GFY you and hang up.

When NOMOROBO blocks a call, do you still have the caller ID information so you can tell who called?

My home pone is a VOIP line from Xfinity, and is linked to NOMOROBO. My attached cordless phone does not show Caller ID if call trapped by NOMOROBO, however oddly, if I have the TV on, a "crawl" appears at top right of screen with Caller ID info, momentarily.

I don't use a cell phone.

Just "landline" (actually VOIP).

I also use NoMoRobo. It catches most of the spam calls. Actually, I've been getting very few of them lately.

Phone can go 2, 3, 4 days without ringing. Sometimes even longer. That's fine with me. I don't want to talk to you.

Ed P snipped-for-privacy@snet.xxx wrote

I normally answer "well I was doing fine until you called me"

They always listen when I say that.

Hardly surprising given that they use the dregs of the world to cold call.

Much more likely that its a robot dialer and that once you answer there is no free monkey available to talk to you.

See:

That TV crawler is from your xfinity TV service, which keeps a complete log of your phone number's incoming and outgoing calls. You can see your log by signing in to your account on their web site. Takes a little navigation but it's there. Generally, incoming calls with a duration of 0 or of about 6 seconds are blocked calls.

NoMoRobo is set to "work" between the first and second ring.

Caller ID info doesn't "come in" until about that same time

-- i.e. either at the second ring or just before it.

Thus... if NoMoRobo is quick enough, it may be able to "cut the call" before caller ID comes in.

I've seen this on my own phones. Example:

- phone rings (1st ring)

- caller ID shows only "incoming call" (no caller ID yet)

- NoMoRobo cuts off the call

- no caller ID seen, only "incoming call". NoMoRobo "cut it off" before the caller ID arrived.