Telemarketers Bothering You?

[Nitetimes]

We can't seem to totally get rid of them... but we have minimized their interruptions...

We have an electronic gadget on our phone that will erase our number from an automated dialer.

Plus we are unlisted...

Plus we use that national do not call list.

But during this recent downturn in the economy the calls have picked up to something like 2 or 3 calls a week.

I don't know how that compares to you guys... how many calls a week do you get?

Mike...

A week!!! I get more than that in a day! I'm on all the lists, it helped for a while but they're back again. My ISP only allows me to block 30 numbers and it can't block 'unknown' (don't know how they do that) but I have slowed them down a bit by blocking any anonymous callers.

[astrotrailer]

Two years ago I installed a public domain PBX program called Asterisk on a small computer.
It has a pair of phone ports. One connects to the phone company the other to our house phones.
It answers the phone without ringing the inside phones. I require the incoming called to press 1
if they wish to talk or leave a message. If 1 isn't pressed it repeats the request and hangs up
if 1 isn't press within 30 seconds. This gets rid of all the robo calls. If a human telemarketer
is calling and gets through, I add the numbers to my blacklist and they never can ring the phone
again. I put friends and families numbers on a whitelist so they can ring in without pressing 1.
We now go weeks without any unwanted calls. The computer kept us sane last year during the
primary and general elections. I only let direct family ring the phone outside of desired calling
hours others go directly to voicemail. This keeps us from getting late night calls from friends of
our older children.

The solution is a bit technical but lots of people use Asterisk to run a business and you
can program it to do about anything.

Jeff

[Arne]

I answer the phone, if no one responds in 2 seconds, I hang up. old fashioned, but it works, and I only get about 1 of those calls per day.

[TomW]

The best way to get rid of them is to listen to one of them and then tell them if they can get the court appointed trustee to approve the payment, then you are all for it.

I did this about a year ago and since then I get about 1 per month. I tell them the same thing. I guess they enter a no call against my number in their database.