Harassed by robocalls [Telecom]

The point I was making is that it'd be easy to just use a SkypeOut account to robocall.

Better yet, someone wrote a PERL script that would let you change your MagicJack outbound CLID to anything you wanted. I haven't used it in awhile but it really let you use ANYTHING.

One possible problem is that (at least out here, in the San Francisco Bay Area), parents occasionally cheat to get their kids into a better school district. Schools have been quite lax about verifying the given address and phone number (generally, if the parents are willing to cheat, my guess is that the kids will be overachievers, one way or another, and if it does not cause the school to need to create an extra class, the cost is fairly minimal - however, our local school district discovered that it was costing them more than one extra class a couple of years ago ... but that's another story).

Anyway, some parents give intentionally wrong information. On the other hand (politicians prefer one-handed scientists who don't say "On the other hand ..."), every time I registered a kid for school, there were a ton of forms - errors are not unexpected.

Mark

It's 1950 all over again. "Dial carefully..." We seem to have a lot of people who think it's OK to guess when dialing.

And, yes, they hit redial, and they get angry at me for not being the person they wanted.

I have had a few tell me that have dialed them at my number for years, and I tell them I have had this number for 20 plus years, one got really nasty with me. I put their phone number in my modems demon dialer and had it call them some 50.000 times, they complained to the telephone company and I explained to the phone company what happened. Nothing came of it and the fool no longer calls me.

What did they want you to do? Transform yourself into someone else?

One person was a real pain in the neck. I got the name first and last who they were looking for. I did a search and got the correct phone number, it was close to mine, but only if they were blind in one eye and could not see out of the other. When they called me, I gave them the correct number and figured that would take care of it, but a few days later they called again, I guess they were still using either an incorrect contact list or redialing. again I gave them the number, still called again and this time left a message on my voice mail which clearing states who they reached. I called the person who they were trying to reach and explained what they kept doing, he said he would clear it up. Still continued, since it was a local number I just blocked it and problem ended. If I could have found an address on them, it is not listed, I guess I could have called a friend of mine who still worked for Verizon and had her check the CNA Data Base, I would have sent that person who the operator on the Laugh In would send out and have damage done.

My telephone number is one number off of Radio Shack. Usually I tell them to look it up and dial again and that takes care of it. One true asshole could not take try again for an answer and demanded that I stop screwing around and check stock for a part he needed. Well the devil was sitting on my shoulder so I put the phone down for five minutes and then picked it up and said "we don't have that part here but I found one for you at the Arlington center store. Give me your name and I'll have them hold it for you." Arlington is clean on the other side of the entire metro area a full hour away at that time of day. I then called the Arlington store and told them he was coming and got the positively wonderful news that the item was discontinued months ago and was no longer available through Radio Shack. That just really made my day. So I told them to tell the guy to listen louder next time someone told him he had the wrong number. The clerk asked me to talk to the manager so I ran it down to her. I thought she would be ticked but she really enjoyed the whole thing. She assured me that it would take all the discipline she could muster to not send him to Baltimore which would be at least as far past me the other way as Arlington is and even further into rush hour. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have had a video of them explaining to him that he had been talking to a wrong number who sent him on the white pony just for drill.

Your story brings to memory what happened years ago. I spend 30 plus years with GTE in California; in COEI, which is Network Construction; like Bells Western Electric. We had a department phone in the Ocean CO in Long Beach, each day from about 6 am to after 9 we would get calls asking for a start time for the Golf Course in Lon Beach. What was happening was when the hunt group was busy the next call would go to another hunt group, which had out number on it; I would tell them they reached the wrong number, most were understanding and would try again. I passed the problem to our customer service office and they contacted the golf course and told them that they needed to add more numbers to their hunt group because they were getting more calls they it could handle. For a reason I never understood they would not upgrade. We continued to get calls, it was a real pain. One day I was really busy and got pissed off, so when the calls started I took start times, most wanted 8 or 9 am start times, so I gave it to them. Several of us went across the street and waited to see what would happen. The next day a service order to add more trunks and the problem went away; nothing then a bunch of pissed off golfers. Just was in the old Step days.

Boy I sure miss the days working on that type if switch, no fun today, most of the people today have no idea what the old days were like when we fixed things, not just pulled a card out. I kept a test train and power supply when I pulled out an old office and show it to crews I work with at times, I have it in my garage.

I am a passive reader of the postings in this group. However I could not resist the urge pass a comment on this link. Sorry if hurt anybody with this comment.

But similar incident ocured about 4 decades back. The local railway equerry number and one of uncles number were closer. Once he was woken up in the middle of the night and person on the other end inquired about arrival details of a morning train. My uncle answered that the train has met with an accident and will not arrive next day. I don't know about the impact caused on the other person; but my uncle was taken to task by may father for such a bad behaviour.

Gopalakrishnan.P

This sounds like a serious misconfiguration on the part of the telco. Do I understand right that the person dialed the CORRECT number for the Golf Course, and got a wrong number? And this happened consistently during heavy calling times? And the telco thinks it's up to the customer to fix it by ordering more lines?

Now, granted, if the hunt group is overflowing every day, the customer needs to order more lines, but a caller shouldn't get a wrong number even if the hunt group only overflows once every ten years. The caller should get a busy signal, or an all-trunks-busy signal.

I don't know, that would have been a maintenance problem, but from what I remember the group would start spinning when more calls came in than the golf course had. The problem was they only had 4 lines and claimed that that was enough to handle the calls most of the time; the C Lead guys did an audit and found out that they needed at least 8 lines to handle the calls for 3 hours a day. Thinking back that would have at least stopped the calls to us, but then callers would have gotten a fast busy (120) most would never had noticed the difference.

While not a robocall this thread has reminded me of something that occurred

Our local phone exchange was replaced, building and all, causing all kinds of problems. In our case we would pick up the phone to make an outgoing call expecting to get a dial tone. Randomly we would actually be cut into an existing phone conversation. No we were not on a party line but it sure seemed like it.

Complaints to the phone company did nothing to fix the problem as they claimed they could not duplicate the (random) problem. It was not until I picked up the phone and was cut into a conversation between our local sheriff and the state police that something was done.

For some reason the police were not happy to have me listening while they discussed an ongoing investigation. I explained the problem and lack of support by the phone company in resolving it. I was told to put down the phone, not hang up, and wait for a deputy to drive over to the house.

The "scene" was secured by the deputy and the phone company was "ordered" to trace all parts of the connection between the three of us. It took a quite a while but they found our line wired to an extra relay. I was told the extra relay was bridged to outgoing trunk lines and was randomly triggering when we picked up our phone. If the line we bounced to was busy we would be cut into the call, if not we were given a dial tone from somewhere. After the "fix" we had no further problems with the phone.

I agree, but this was some 40 years ago and things were very different then. Being so long ago and having only been with the company a very short time and not really understanding what was happening, I just passed it on and it appears nothing was done about it. As I said one day i just got very pissed because it kept happening and nothing had been done about it either from the company and also having myself talking to the customer. Also part of the problem also appeared that some of the callers were indeed calling the wrong number since it was just one number off of their pilot number. Looking at it now it was a combination of both the company not getting the problem fixed and the customer not wanting to spend the extra money for more trunks; by the way this all happened within a 3 day period, so it did not go on very long, the number that kept getting called was a CO phone that had just been installed for a job we just started, and after that they did change out number.

I don't see why they'd get a fast busy instead of line busy: if the call is at the last pick in the hunt, the next choice is line busy, no?

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

I know when things got busy the roats would start spinning; I know now that should not have even happened, but I was new and really was just starting to understand how trunking worked.

Equipment does strange things sometimes. In step offices, if wipers were not maintained they would get out of alignment. We had one case of out door access phone ringing a subscriber's phone, [and] this went on for many years. The customer would answer their phone, but by the time they did, whoever had picked up our door phone [had] hung up and [had been admitted].

One day both meet on line, and as you said the line was held up and a trace was started. The wiper on a switch that was a closed loop line was off by a half of a contact and connected to both phones. The problem was fixed and no further problems. A few days after that, the company replaced the access phone line with an Enter Phone system which was a direct ring down system.

But, if they only had 4 people to answer phones what good would it be to have 4 unanswered lines ringing? Just adding 4 lines would have solved the busy condition (maybe), but the cost of the lines would be small compared to having to hire 4 extra people to handle the actual calls, right? Clearly, the problem was the hunt group should have rolled over to a busy signal instead of another non-related number.

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.