The return of Billy Don't Lose My Number

[EricKei]

Legitimate businesses are required to keep current copies of the Don Not Call list (I suggest getting on it if you're in the US); some places are exempt, such as charities and political campaigns (*$^#%$*#&^@$!)...But any business, I would imagine, would WANT to know what people don't want to be called, so that they do not waste time/money calling people who will never, ever buy their product!

[Sapphire Silk]

Personally, I think that the law ought to require that anybody calling a cell phone for any of the reasons you can't block (surveys, political campaigning, and a few others) ought to be required to pay for the call and have it not cost the cell phone owner anything.

This is why Federal law prohibits collection agents and the like from calling cell phones; because the person being called essentially is forced to pay for the calls. It's a $10,000 fine. These agencies know the prefixes for cell phone numbers and should know not to call them.

Legitimate businesses are required to keep current copies of the Don Not Call list (I suggest getting on it if you're in the US); some places are exempt, such as charities and political campaigns (*$^#%$*#&^@$!)...But any business, I would imagine, would WANT to know what people don't want to be called, so that they do not waste time/money calling people who will never, ever buy their product!

I've gotten snotty remarks from charities and political groups about how they don't have to follow the Do Not Call registery. My response is, "Well you just ensured that I will never donate any money to you."

[Argabarga]

Reminds me that somehow, I've been getting calls at work on the company cellphone from two numbers that I'm sure have never been called by anyone using the phone. (It's brand new, only myself and one other person use it, and we only use it for the internet ap attached that lets us search the vehicle ticket database to see if the cars we tow in have outstanding tickets, we don't us it to make phone calls, we have another company cell for that since this one isn't tied to the business number)

One just comes up as "UNKNOWN" and the other as a 303 area code which the phone says is Colorado.

Persistent little buggers too

I can come in from a weekend and find 8 or more attempts to call the phone from either of those numbers.

When it rings while I"m working, I just hit the "hang up" button and never answer the call, hoping they'll get the message that they won't get through, but they persist.

The "UNKNOWN" guy called again the other day while I was driving, rather than hang up *and since I'm not paying for it* I accepted the call, dropped it on the dashboard and then tuned the radio to the local classic rock station and cranked the volume. By the time the song ended, he'd hung up.

But he still kept calling back........

I'm trying to think of new ways to confuse him, maybe just stick it up the tailpipe next....

[PepperElf]

hmm... if you only use the phone for data you may want to consider having incoming calls disabled - or seeing if you can even do that. IIRC some people who are deaf have it done since they can't hear the caller anyway.

only other thing i can think of is setting the voicemail message to the "3 tone" disconnected sound (not sure if that's allowed or not though).

[Argabarga]

Actually, the best might be to answer it as the business and ask where he needs towed to. Completely true after all....

[ADeMartino]

Calls both ways count against the minutes you prepaid for. At least for tracfones.

For most pay-as-you-go plans that I've seen.