Annoying phone calls are a fact of life, it seems. The creation of the national Do Not Call database here in the US does not seem to have made one bit of a difference. In fact, with all of its exceptions it may have even made matters worse. Charities and political campaigns are exempt from honoring the list, and it seems I get more of those calls now than ever before. Companies with which you have an existing business relationship are also free to call you as much as they want; well, almost any company can dream up a way to make that exception apply. And then there are the ones that do blatantly violate the Do Not Call laws and simply hang up on you when you make it known that you're on to them.
There's a whole other category of annoying calls I have to deal with on a regular basis as well. The number we were assigned when we moved into our condo (which is now my cell phone) apparently used to belong to a large household full of people who didn't pay their bills... or a couple who liked to use false or stolen identities to hide from bill collectors. All I know is there are at least six different names for which I receive collection calls all the time, even now after having the number for almost four years. No matter how many times we tell these agencies that they have a wrong or outdated number, they of course don't believe us, thinking we are the people they're looking for and we're just lying to avoid them. It's gotten to a point where I just don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize, and my voicemail greeting emphasizes that if they don't leave a message and identify themselves, they will not ever get through to me. Some have told me to change the number, but really, what guarantee is there that the next number I get won't come with baggage of its own, and where does it end?
I did just find this web site at www.reportphonenumbers.com where you can search for and leave comments about numbers that call you. It seems like a good idea, but unfortunately it's really only useful as a sounding board to share your experiences and frustration with others. If they offered some automated way to report illegal or abusive calls to the proper authorities, it would be a lot more useful. It's also open to a lot of abuse the way it's set up. I saw several numbers posted with comments accusing people of being child molesters or having affairs with the poster's spouse. There really needs to be some kind of screening in place so that innocent people don't end up with their phone numbers posted along with some false accusation that might prompt abusive phone calls from other users of the site.
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