If you receive a phone call from an unknown number on your mobile, and you don’t recognise it, try reciting the following:
“I am sorry for interrupting you, but before you continue I felt that I should make it clear to you that I do not recognise your number, and subsequently I am unable to verify your identity. For reasons of security, I am therefore unwilling to answer any of your questions or provide any personal information whatsoever. If you represent a company with whom I have an existing contract, then please send your query to me through the mail, using the address which you have for me in your database, so that I may verify the authenticity of your request. I apologise for any offence that this may cause. Whether you come under this category or not, please update my communication preferences in your database to indicate that I do not wish to be contacted on this telephone number without prior arrangement.”
Consider this to be version 0.1 of this document. If anybody has any suggestions for how it can be improved, then please put them in the comments box, and I’ll incorporate them into the final version.
And perhaps we could even have an alternative, hyper-offensive version for those people who really like to make themselves unpopular.
In case you are wondering if I actually used the above speech at some point today, I have to say that I didn’t. What actually happened was the following:
Phone: Brrrring.
Me: “Hello? Hello? Hello?”
Some Guy: “Hi, this is just a quick call about your mobile phone contract.”
Me: (damn right it’s a quick call) “Sorry, you must have a wrong number. This isn’t a mobile phone.”
With that, I hung up.
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (presses “reject” button)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (presses “reject” button)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (presses “reject” button)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (presses “reject” button)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (presses “reject” button)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (presses “reject” button)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (reach for “reject” button, but the phone stops ringing before I answer it)
Phone: Brrring.
Me: (reach for “reject” button, but the phone stops ringing before I answer it)
And that was, as they say, that.
“You have not been charged for this recitation”
“Fuck off and die” – too much?
Yes, Gordon, I was intending to waste a little more of their time than that.
And also to ensure that I don’t mistakenly cause any offence to the guy who cooks my soup, of course.
How’s this for a scam? An automated dialler calls your phone at a wierd hour. You don’t answer. You see a number on your phone. You dial it to see who it was (cause you’re changing flats at the time and getting lots of unrecognized numbers). It charges you
Oooh, yes, that’s a nasty trick. I’d never phone back a number if I didn’t recognise it (unless I was expecting a call from a plumber whose number I don’t know), which is a start. The question is where I go next with this. Should I be picking up the phone when I don’t recognise the number (unless I am expecting a call from a plumber whose number I don’t know)?
I let unknown numbers ring to voice mail when “working from home” but in the office since many of our clients and our office itself is via a PABX I answer unknown numbers.