about to destroy the home phone, help?

[Midnight12]

ok...for days, almost a week now the house phone has been ringing through out the day. like four times a day with the same info on the caller id either out of area, or some area in town.
And this caller cannot seem to leave a message. I have tried changing it to polite answering machine message leave your name and number please thank you. to
you've reached house number leave a message and we'll call ya back. in a kind of happy yet almost forceful tone to hi you've reached number, you know the drill.

yes *69 has come to mind yet as its the house phone and i'm not paying the bill I won't do this. yet. about to pay for a new house phone that has built in caller id or trash the whole thing completely.

My suspicion is that its one of two people, my bio dad trying to call, or these people after eldest sis in law for whatever it is who refuse to believe i have no idea where she is don't know her number and have already asked to no longer be called here.

have never done *69 what should i do beyond being courteous and acting as if i'm a customer if its a business or go oops sorry wrong number?

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Probably collections. That's their MO. Maybe call the phone company and report harassing calls.

If the number is showing up, do a google search on it. Or send it to me and let me do one. I'm pretty good at tracking down this stuff.

this happened to me last summer, some collections company with someone's else's debt actually told me outright they intended to harass me. So I tracked them down and let them know otherwise.

Evidently, I was convincing because they didn't call back ever again.

[Midnight12]

thats the thing. the Caller id machine is so old. it only shows the name, and the one in dad's room is...forget it only he knows how to work it. And I have tried.
Thus my frustration over it. However I will ask dad to get a number so I can give it to you.
The collections people have been dealt with. I finally told dad and he called sis in law. Its got to be serious when the one time a message was left it was an actual person, investigative solutions. either meant to sound scary or her ex did something bad and they think she knows where he is. psh. Long story on that one

[telecom_goddess]

Talk to the phone company, it's possible you can do *69 without additional charges. But they would be able to verify.

Secondly after each of the calls do a *57, which is a call trace. This costs nothing. Then when you have about 3 or 4 of those file a police report and they will work with the phone company.

If you DO find out the caller id of the number, and if you have selective call rejection available as an option, you can have the phone company stick that phone number in the switch so calls to you from it are blocked.

good luck.

[Midnight12]

oooh thankies much will do so!
trying to get dad to switch to someone cheaper here as he is paying almost 70 and thats without long distance...yah we have a house phone but cannot call out for long distance...

[Midnight12]

and someone did leave a message tonight but as the answering machine plays the oldest message first dad in law just erased the whole damn thing.
so anyone that did leave a number...poof gone....GRRRRR