Re: How phone companies can end unwanted robocalls [telecom]

In my own experience, the biggest problem with robocalls has been legal ones: political campaigns, surveys, charities, and sales people linked (more or less) to companies I've dealt with.

I dread the week of election day because my phone rings off the hook with political calls. Even low level candidates and their supporters flood the phone lines.

Accordingly, I wish the law could be changed to prohibit all those calls. But I doubt that will ever happen, as I can't see politicians giving up that easy campaign medium. Indeed, politicians tried to pass a law allowing robo calls to cell phones, but fortunately, that failed. The other groups have strong lobbies, too. Lastly, I can't help but suspect the telephone industry wants it, as they get a cut of the action. Obviously the makers of the robo call hardware push for it.

I did have one small victory: my housing complex got a robo caller to alert residents to emergencies, such as a utility failure. But later they began to use it to announce routine items such as social events or routine meetings. I complained long and hard about that, and now they limit use to true urgent situations.

I will acknowledge that there are a few tolerable uses of robo-calls:

--pharmacy advising a prescription is ready for pick up.

--doctor's office calling to remind patient of upcoming appointment.

--town or housing complex reporting urgent or emergency situation

P.S. I haven't heard from "Rachel" of credit card services in a long time.

Rachel changed her name to Trudy.

Bill Horne Moderator

And for parents, schools calling about emergency closings, etc. (maybe you meant that as part of town emergencies).

Basically, any use that's opt-in should be OK (similar to automated emails). Grubhub can send you a text you when your pickup order is ready, but you have to request that on their site.