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Like most adults living in America today, I get many phone calls. Some from my wife, my mom, my brother, my friends. But sometimes, I get phone calls from the local health club, the local car dealership or somebody trying to get me to buy 5 pounds of veal.
Unsolicited phone calls. We all hate them with a raw purple passion, but - if you have a phone - they’re almost as certain as death and taxes. It sucks, but that’s the freakin’ reality of the situation.
This little gem occurred to me just a few days ago. This past weekend, I’d taken our car into the local Toyota dealership for it’s oil change/tire rotation/etc. maintenance visit. It went very well, no hiccups or accidental scratches, none of that. Then, the following Monday morning, I got an email from them asking to take a short survey about my service experience. Took less than 2 minutes and I was happy to do it.
Then they called me. “Just wanted to ask you a few questions about your visit”, the polite man said. “Sorry, I don’t have time right now”, (and I wasn’t lying, I really was busy), “call me back tomorrow.” After I hung up, I quickly assessed whether it was worth adding this number to my address book. “Huh,” I thought, and then I saved it under a brand new contact called “Ignore”.
Seriously, everybody with a phone capable of storing multiple numbers for a single contact (especially you iPhone owners - since you can store an arbitrary number of phone numbers, not just ‘work’,'home’, and ‘mobile’) - create this contact right now. I’ll wait.
Now, the next time an undesirable calls you from a non-blocked number, just tell them you’re busy and to call back later. Then, add them to that “Ignore” contact. Presuming all of the outgoing calls from their call center are routed through a single number (which is typically the case), the next time they call, your phone will tell you exactly what to do.
I can hear you saying “well, why not just ask them not to call back?” - this works sometimes, but not always. And even though they’re required by law to not call you back (assuming it’s an unsolicited call from a complete stranger, which isn’t the case for my car dealership), we’ve all heard stories from people who’ve repeatedly asked to be “removed from the list” and still get those calls.
If you’re really savvy, you can ignore everything you’ve just read and sign up for GrandCentral (assuming you can get an invite).
Technorati Tags: phone, spam, telemarketers, iphone, lifehacks
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[…] iPhone 24Ã?7 wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Like most adults living in America today, I get many phone calls. Some from my wife, my mom, my brother, my friends. But sometimes, I get phone calls from the local health club, the local car dealership or somebody trying to get me to buy 5 pounds of veal. Unsolicited phone calls. We all hate them with a raw purple passion, but - if you have a phone - they’re almost as certain as death and taxes. It sucks, but that’s the freakin’ reality of the situation. This little gem occurred to me jus […]
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
There’s a russian family who occasionally calls my cell phone number - it must be a close match to this “Mischa” that they would always demand to speak to. I would always try to explain to them that they dialed the wrong number, but their english isn’t so great - I’d give up and hang up on them again, only to have them call back immediately (at least once).
Eventually I added their number under the contact name “Wrong Number”. I once had my iPhone out on the table when they called again - seeing it was a “Wrong Number” call, I ignored it. My friend witnessed this and exclaimed, “Man, the iPhone even knows when you get a Wrong Number phone call? We must be livin’ in the future now!”
A note of caution: Make sure that it’s a call center calling you, and not someone from the actual dealership. Otherwise, the next time you have your car serviced, you’ll ignore the call that’s telling you that your car is ready, or that it’s delayed, or that it’s about to get expensive…
Bravo! great post. i do something similar. i just make up a stupid name for them and set the ringer to “prison riot”.
@Mau
If it’s something like a car dealership, typically they’ll leave a message (which I listen to). Obviously if there’s a recall on my car or something, I don’t just ignore *that*
Great post. You could take it a step forward and give that meta-contact its own ring tone so that you know without looking that you should ignore it.
Quality. Thanks for the tip.
Arrived via AllTop…
That’s a fantastic suggestion, I never thought of it…you can bet I’ll be adding quite a few “Is Bob there?” numbers to the phone!
Great idea, I’m going to take it a step further and set a ringtone that’s completely silent, that way I’ll only hear it ring when it’s someone that should be calling me. Thanks.