Can someone explain to me why there's all these spam calls where no one is there if you do answer?


I just don't see the reason for it. Of course I've now adopted the stance of not answering ANY call that is from someone not in my listings.


Seems like a stupid waste of time.

IME they're the "Your business is eligible to receive an instant loan of up to 250k"
calls...

I've done everything to get them to stop.  I get about 30 a day.  Im like you, if I don't recognize the number, I just let it go to VM.

I've told them I'm on the Do NOT Call registry. They don't care. They just hang up. They also spoof their numbers from all over the country.

Oddly, they hang up if you ask them the name of their company.  On more than one occasion, I've acted like I was interested....Played nice and asked them what the name of the company was...They immediately balked and asked why I would I would want to know that...

If I'm about to get 250k, from someone, I'd like to know who I'm doing business with.

They didn't bite.  They immediately hung up.  

Hell, I get those kind of call as well. It's the ones with no one there at all I don't understand.

You answer and it's just dead air.


What's the point?

I've always thought it was to put you on a list of viable numbers (numbers with actually people on the other end) which probably gets sold to other low lifes.

Most likely they are speculative calls placed by a telemarketing center.

In order to maximize agent productivity, an automated dialer estimates when an agent from the pool will become available, then dials a prospect in advance, attempting to have a fresh prospect on the line exactly when an agent is ready. If there is no answer at the prospect site, the dialer moves on and no agent time is wasted. If an agent is not yet ready for a new call, the prospect call is dropped.

Your time has no value, the agent's time is worth something.

The FCC has a few resources.

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One of our business lines is on a robolist. When I pickup that line you have about a second to be recognized, beyond that you'll be placed on hold with no music. Good luck waiting for me to pick up that line before the KSU burns out.

The above may not be the best strategy if the dialer marks the line as "no answer" and cues it for a return call.

Occasionally, I'll stay on the line long enough to ask that I be removed from the list.

I'm not sure how effective any of this has been, but over time, the number of robocalls is diminishing.

I had a call informing me that my computer was disrupting the Internet and I had to immediately go to a certain website in order to fix the problem. Failure to to this might result in my connection being shut down.

Since I had a couple minutes and was in a sour mood, I asked them to give me my IP address. The agent didn't know what an IP address was, but referred me to a snarky supervisor. The supervisor and I bantered a bit, him deriding my technical approach, me insisting that a legitimate report would include my IP address. After about two minutes I hung up. There was no chance that I would go to their website.

About 18 years ago, I was on an service elevator at work. The phone rings and I picked up. It was AT&T trying to sell long distance.

I kindly told the operator that the number she reached is unable to make calls out. Just kindly asked why. I replied "Because it's one of those emergency elevator phones." "OH, well I guess long distance phone call would be the last thing on the users mind. Well I'll just put this number on the invalid number list."

Guess what? That's what I've been telling other telemarketers since then to my personal number.

KOT

I got one today that said it was from Denver IA. When I answered, there was about a minute long recording about how they could lower my student loan. I don't have a student loan. ive never had a student loan. this is getting worse

I'm surprised you guys are surprised.
This is a phone version of email validation.
You answer the phone means that it's live phone that can be sold to telemarketers.

Sometimes, it's google and other locator services validating the business line.

i get 2 calls a week from the "IRS" and that the IRS is suing me for my taxes...

i ask them to verify my address and they always give me the wrong one... and thats when i say, if you were the IRS you would know what my address is!

My parents got their first "Microsoft tech support" call the other week. Thankfully, they were already aware of that scam.

I am getting a lot of vacation spam calls on my work phone, nothing on my personal phone luckily. I let them go on the spiel and play it out. When they ask me if there was anywhere on the planet I could go I tell them Vail CO. Then they get all excited and push there thing on me. Then I tell them I am already there and to piss off. I get this call every month or 2. Things to kill time while driving...

i block the numbers on my iPhone. have like 30 numbers blocked.

The driving force for this phone and email spam is the near zero cost of prospecting. If you know what you are doing, robo dialers and spambots are inexpensive. Flooding the networks with calls and emails has a near zero cost. Thousands of dead end calls or tens of millions of ignored emails are cheap. A few positive responses make the profit. And there is a "service industry" layer that is selling robo dialers and spam services. The draw is that, this is so easy, you are dumb not to enter this "business". These operators lure inexperienced get rich quick victims into the business. This is where the grammatically pitiful emails originate. I don't think that many of these businesses last long, but there are thousands more victims waiting in the wings.

Got four yesterday.

One from Dumbass, one from Dirtbag, one from Stupid and one from Idiot.


One from Stupid I was at the grocery in the checkout line. That voice announcement got some funny looks... :-)