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Originally Posted by rebekahb
Haha, I wonder if my beater car with 156k will qualify  |
I always pester the person in the call center that catches all of the robodialer calls. They hang up every time when I try to get my warranty extended on my 1967 VW-Beetle-based Formula Vee open-wheel race car.
Seriously though, they are all using random number robodialers, with spoofed caller ID and no regard to the do-not-call list. They seem to target our area code and prefix en masse for a day or two, and then go silent for a week or more. With unlimited VoIP trunks to North America from overseas being dirt cheap, telemarketers can originate calls from overseas where they are not touchable by the feds and pipe the responses to call centers in places like India where they have no idea that the inquiries are coming from robodialers and not legitimate customers making their own calls.
The FCC has recently un-tied the hands of phone carriers with regards to blocking robocalls. Some of the mobile carriers are already offering blocking services, but it may require downloading a smartphone app and/or paying an extra fee for the service.
The last major iPhone iOS upgrade has a new feature to "Silence Unknown Callers" who are not in your address book. If your work calls are all coming from contacts, this is an option.
I also have a paid subscription to the iOS Robokiller app, which is neat because they transfer suspected telemarketers to their "answer bots" for revenge. I don't care about effectiveness as much as the warm and fuzzy feeling from sending scammers to a bot that pretends to be a radio station call-in contest that tells them they won a free cruise for being caller number five.....