Community Chat

[Sweet Caroline 1]

Some scammers just want to record you saying the word yes so they can hook you up to their dirty doins.       I get several phone calls a day, from different numbers and area codes.  I say hello, hello, hello and no response.  They just hang on until I hang up.  Wonder if my number is written on a bathroom wall somewhere?            

[Sweet Caroline 1]

@Tink814, I would feel creepy and very uneasy getting phone calls like that.  Because they know your name.  My flip phone won't block numbers but if yours does, you could block the number.  But if they are set out to disturb you, they can call you from another number.  I hope it doesn't happen again... SC 

[Laura14]

I know some have said it doesn't work for them but, if you can catch the call, I find picking up and immediately hanging up on unknown numbers does wonders for getting yourself unbothered.   

[bonnie f]

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@Spurt wrote:

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@bonnie f wrote:

if it bothers you that much block the number. all the spam calls etc that i get i block them

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@bonnie f 

Sadly, that doesn't always work, because the caller "spoofs, the number which is not the real number they are calling from....

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ahhh ok gotcha..

[FrostyBabe1]

@Tink814 

Does your voicemail greeting on your phone give your name? If so, that's how they know it. Doesn't mean it's not a scam of some sort, but that's one possibility of how they got your name.

My greeting is simply a generic, machine generated voice saying that my number is not available. 

[Still Raining]

First you would have to more precisely define wrong number.  My medical system comes in with a lot of different numbers, but it is for me.  I have learned not to block too fast.

[Jinlei]

If I do not recognize the name and/or number I delete and that is the end of it.  I also block that number.

[chickenbutt]

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@GoneButNotForgotten wrote:

Oh dear, I've had a continuing problem with this...for years.

There is a Russian psychiatrist, with a very heavy accent, in this area and for YEARS I've asked her to change her number or at least give out business cards so I won't get her voicemail messages.

Some of them are alarming and some of them would break your heart. I especially remember one mother who was at her wits end because her daughter was cutting herself, again. I happened to pick up the call, so I talked to the dear lady for a while, and suggested she find herself a different doctor.

I know, from what some of her patients have told me, and from my own interactions with her when I've relaid messages to her, that she's a cold, uncaring person.

I think the only way for me to stop getting her calls is for her to move away or die.

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I can relate!  For many years after we got this particular landline # we were getting calls from a local (not near my house, but in this city) retirement-type complex.  Apparently  they had this number as the number of a doctor who treated patients there, or something.

It got really frustrating telling them over and over and over that this is NOT Dr X phone number and has never been.  Somebody wrote it down wrong at some point and you need to change it.   Well, they didn't.

Then, phones came along with a 'block' feature and that stopped.   

[KarenQVC]

@Tink814 These sales callers can be good.  There was a young gal selling gym memberships who sounded like she could be my daughter.

We live in a place where a lot of Chinese live.  We get long strange messages in Chinese.  There is one old Chinese lady who just yells into the machine.  Sounds like that newscaster from North Korea who makes all the big announcements.

We once had an old number an airlines had used.  People kept calling me to ask if their plane was on time.  One day I lost it and did like an SNL skit of a crazy employee, complete with stories of plane crashes.  I never got another call. 

[SoX]

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@Peaches McPhee wrote:

Many years ago, on a "landline" with an answering machine, someone left me a message accusing me of being with her man.  She threatened me, told me to lay off, that he was only her man, and I'd better back off.   

It was a wrong number.    

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@Peaches McPhee 

This reminds me of an old joke by (I think) Red Foxx back in the day.  The husband would pick up the phone and the caller would always ask "is the coast clear?"  The husband thought the caller was trying to reach the Weather Report and hung up  ... until one day he figured it out.   Next time the caller asked "is the coast clear?" the husband said in a feminine voice "yes" ... and was waiting when the "caller" arrived at his house!