TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call"

Dumb Question About "Do Not Call"

Randall (rvh40@insightbb.com)
Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:10:59 -0500

Three times a day, every day, the phone rings and a female robot voice
says "Hello, this is not a sales call. This is about an important
business matter. Again, this is /not/ a sales call, this is an
Important Business Matter!"

Then the damn thing hangs up.

There is no CLID info with the calls -- they come through as "Unknown"
or "Unavailable" -- despite the fact that this line is /supposed/ to
reject anonymous calls.

Been going on for three weeks or so.

Three calls, every day.

If I'm here when it rings and I see "Unknown" or "Anonymous", I just
pick the receiver up and set it back down. They'll call back.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is no such thing as a dumb
question around here, Randall. Just ask many of our users. With
my tin-foil hat and diseased brain, I am likely to say almost
anything as I bring discredit and shame to the entire net.

The 'reject anonymous calls' condition only applies if the caller
_deliberatly_ inserted *67 to withhold his number. That condition will
not work if the failure to deliver ID is due to a telco shortcoming,
such as the type of switch used by the sending telco, etc. The 'reject
anonymous' condition relies on the sending telco specifically saying
'do not say who is calling'. In your case the sending telco is not
saying that, it just does not know who the caller is or else the
details somehow got lost in the switching matrix on the way. But it
did not _deny_ or _hide_ anything at the caller's request.

You still have a way around it however. Subscribe through your telco
to *60 (I think that is called 'reject these callers' in many places).
*60 answers you and says 'enter the number to be rejected' or words to
that effect and from that point on _that_ caller gets a message saying
you are not taking calls at this time.

Now I heard your next question already: if you do not know _who_ is
calling, how are you supposed to block them? Good question. The *60
recording also tells you 'to reject the last call you received,
whether or not you know the number, press (some) key.' I think around
here it is '01' or something. You press whatever you were told, and
the Operator-Bot responds, "Thank you! That number is a _private_
entry." But none the less it has been blocked. Your telco has a 'local
cache' of the last call you placed/received and it uses that entry to
do the blocking. If your telco offers 'return last call' service (*68
I think) then you can also use that service to return the last call
and find out what the 'important business matter' is all about. Both
'return last call' and 'reject this caller' service are sold by most
telcos these days. PAT]

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