Rant #2... I'm on a roll... I get about 10 calls from OUT OF AREA (m)

[ciscogizmo1]

most of the time when I answer nobody says anything. Today, somebody said something and they said that they missed dialed. How do I get these calls to stop. I'm serious 10 a day. I work from home so, I have to answer every call and it gets annoying to waste my time. Any ideas???

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

most of the time when I answer nobody says anything. Today, somebody said something and they said that they missed dialed. How do I get these calls to stop. I'm serious 10 a day. I work from home so, I have to answer every call and it gets annoying to waste my time. Any ideas???

I get them as well, though not 10 per day (at least I haven't had that many for awhile). I have caller ID and when I see the number I just don't answer it. Most of the ones I have been getting lately come from "ICI", with a Las 'Vegas area code. But in a month it will change to something new.

When I do answer an unknown call, I handle them as I do our home phone. If I say "Hello" and no answers within a couple of seconds, I immediately hang up.

 

[DaveNV]

Is it a new number? You may want to Google your phone number and see if it used to belong to a national company of some sort. When I first moved into my current home my phone number changed from my previous residence. I didn't know or expect anything unusual with the new number until the Fax calls started at 3 AM every Monday morning. Then came the long-winded, desperate messages left on my answering machine from apparently elderly people who needed to get the payoff from their recently deceased spouse's insurance policy. And then there were the angry rants from dissatisfied customers who couldn't understand why nobody was returning their phone calls.

Turns out my phone number used to be a local number for a national insurance company. The calls went on like that until the next year, when the phone company updated their directories. To live with it, I put a message on my answering machine that said this was a private residence, and NOT the offices of the insurance company. Eventually the calls stopped.

Dave

 

[pjrose]

I'll bet the callers are not dialing 1. That could cause your area code to be seen as a local exchange in their area.

My cell starts with 877, which happens to be a toll-free area code. I frequently get calls intended for various toll-free numbers, because the callers didn't dial 1 so the 877 is not interpreted as an area code. They are dialing 10 numbers - the first 7 are my cell, and the last 3 are just ignored.

if they are calling 877-abc-defg, and they do not dial 1, they get 877-abcd which is my cell.