Calling Me On The Telephone.

When calling me on the telephone, please remember that before I answer my phone, I always check my Caller I.D. screen first. If my Caller I.D. screen does not identify the caller, or if it tells me that the call is from ‘Private Caller’, ‘Unknown Name’, ‘Blocked Number’, ‘Unavailable’, ‘Toll Free Number’, ‘Out of Area’, etc.; I will not answer the call. If you are calling me from a telephone that does not identify the caller or if you have Caller I.D. blocking, just leave a message on my voice mail. Do not hang up and call me back later. That won’t do any good. I check my messages frequently, and I will reply to legitimate voice mail messages. I am sorry if this seems rude, but I get too many robocalls and calls from phony charities, crooks, and scammers, and this is the only way I can control the problem.

You should do the same thing that I do about this. When you answer a telephone call from a robocaller, you are telling the computer that called you that your phone ​number is active and that you answer robocalls. Doing that just gets your name put on their sucker list, and crooks sell their sucker lists to other crooks!

P.S. – I am writing this because 2 days ago I got a voice mail message from “the awards committee” saying that I had “just won a free all-expense paid vacation to Bermuda, including the airfare.” The caller was a man. He spoke with an accent that sounded to me like he was from the British West Indies, but I’m not sure. He said that in order for me to claim my prize, I had to call him back within 24 hours with my credit card number and security code to “verify” my identity. The call came from the 234 Area Code. That’s the Area Code for Nigeria. I didn’t call him back because this didn’t smell entirely kosher to me. Several people have told me that I have a suspicious nature, and I think that’s true. Anyway, it’s been more than 24 hours since I got this message, so I guess I’ve lost my free Bermuda vacation.