What is the purpose of those phone calls where there is nobody there?

[Bryophyte]

I have been getting an increasing number of phone calls where nobody is on the other end, or if they get the answering machine, no message left. They are obviously commercial in nature (caller ID says stuff like "Phone expert" or "low phone bill"). If it's robocallers, why doesn't anyone ever come on the line or a recording play? What do they get out of these calls? Are they wanting to get someone to call back? I've googled the numbers and they almost always report that if you call them back, nobody answers.

I'm just puzzled, and since I got my first one on my cell phone yesterday (it's a prepaid, so these assholes could cost me money if I answer one without looking at the caller ID like I did yesterday), I'm starting to get irritated. I started filing complaints on the DNC list site (<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://www.donotcall.gov/comp...t/complaintcheck.aspx)"><a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx">https://www.donotcall.go.........aintcheck.aspx</a></a>) for whatever it's worth.

Bleh. :|

 

[Descartes]

It's because:

1) In predictive dialing, they will often dial more numbers than agents. This is because a certain percentage of calls will be dead, unanswered, etc.
2) When more calls are answered than agents, you get silence.
3) When you do answer, your phone number gets flagged as a callback. This means you are then on the list of good numbers.

That's how it works.

<disclaimer>My company designs systems that use predictive dialing, but not for the purposes of telemarketing. There are many valid purposes, but obviously this can be exploited.</disclaimer>

 

[Farang]

"Greetings friend, this is Homer Simpson, aka, Happy Dude. The courts have ordered me to call everyone, and apologize for my telemarketing scam...I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send $1 to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power!"

 

[silverpig]

I'm in Canada and my wife and I get them all the time on our cell phones. I made a thread about it a week or two ago even.

The caller ID just gives the number for me, and it's usually a 1-800 number, or 1-866. I used to answer, and there was almost never anyone there. Now I ignore them all and they keep calling. The same number will call 4 times a day for 4-5 days, then I'll get a break of a few days, then it starts again.

I put the numbers into google and just come up with lists of spamming phone numbers that people have compiled. Apparently if you try to call them back there's usually no one there, but occasionally you'll get a person and they'll say they're doing market research or something.

I thought it was illegal to call cell phones for this stuff, but made sure to register with the national do not call list anyways. It's supposed to take a month to become active so I'll see what happens.

 

[spidey07]

Probably bill collectors or some other kind mass calling. Answer the phone with an angry "IDENTIFY YOURSELF!!! THIS IS A DO NOT CALL STATE!"

 

[Bryophyte]

I'm on the DNC list for both my home phone and my cell phone, and have been on it since they started the list (I've confirmed recently that my listing hasn't expired.) They have started up in the last two or three months. I had relatively few problems prior to that. I hope their offices burn down.

 

[spidey07]

I'm getting them about 5-6 times a day. Always yell IDENTIFY YOURSELF! into the phone but nobody seems to answer.

 

[OrByte]

Originally posted by: Descartes
It's because:

1) In predictive dialing, they will often dial more numbers than agents. This is because a certain percentage of calls will be dead, unanswered, etc.
2) When more calls are answered than agents, you get silence.
3) When you do answer, your phone number gets flagged as a callback. This means you are then on the list of good numbers.

That's how it works.

<disclaimer>My company designs systems that use predictive dialing, but not for the purposes of telemarketing. There are many valid purposes, but obviously this can be exploited.</disclaimer>

if not for telemarketing...what purpose?

collections?

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Probably bill collectors or some other kind mass calling. Answer the phone with an angry "IDENTIFY YOURSELF!!! THIS IS A DO NOT CALL STATE!"

make sure you do a *SHAKES FIST IN THE AIR* too...


dat'll show em.

I just don't answer...phone doesn't ring. If I see the light alert I may check caller ID to see who. Everyone that needs to get in touch with me has my non-listed number, everyone that has my main phone number doesn't ever need me immediately. If it's important they can leave a message.

 

[FDF12389]

Originally posted by: OrByte

Originally posted by: Descartes
It's because:

1) In predictive dialing, they will often dial more numbers than agents. This is because a certain percentage of calls will be dead, unanswered, etc.
2) When more calls are answered than agents, you get silence.
3) When you do answer, your phone number gets flagged as a callback. This means you are then on the list of good numbers.

That's how it works.

<disclaimer>My company designs systems that use predictive dialing, but not for the purposes of telemarketing. There are many valid purposes, but obviously this can be exploited.</disclaimer>

if not for telemarketing...what purpose?

collections?

Surveying customers, completed requested follow up calls, letting customers know subscriptions are ending, etc.

 

[Ronstang]

I simply no longer answer the phone unless I can identify the caller as someone I know before I connect.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: Ronstang
I simply no longer answer the phone unless I can identify the caller as someone I know before I connect.

In most cases, you're better off just answering and telling them to put you on their dnc list. They flag your number as a dnc and you wouldn't (shouldn't) get called again.

Worse is letting it ring and just going to your voicemail. That gets flagged as a good number, but just not available. That only insures that you'll continue to get more calls.

Policies are different at different companies of course, and some like to operate in egregious FCC/FTC violation until they get run out of business.

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: Ronstang
I simply no longer answer the phone unless I can identify the caller as someone I know before I connect.

In most cases, you're better off just answering and telling them to put you on their dnc list. They flag your number as a dnc and you wouldn't (shouldn't) get called again.

Worse is letting it ring and just going to your voicemail. That gets flagged as a good number, but just not available. That only insures that you'll continue to get more calls.

Policies are different at different companies of course, and some like to operate in egregious FCC/FTC violation until they get run out of business.

Make your voicemail message the recording about the number no longer being active, and just tell your friends ahead of time so they know to listen all the way through and leave their message.

 

[Red Squirrel]

One of these days I need to setup a way so I can play back clearly "the number you have dialed, is not in service, please place your call again, this is a recording." So when a telemarketter calls (like 90% of them are exempt from the new DNL so that does nothing) I'd just play that. Wonder if that would work.

Though an IVR would be fun too, would probably throw off most of their systems since you'd require to press like 2 or something to actually get through, otherwise it hangs up after 20 seconds. Mine would be like this:

"Thank you for calling me. If you are a telemarketer, press 1. If you are seeking technical support, hang up and lookup "computer repairs" in yellow pages. To speak with me, press 2. To disconnect this call, press star."

If they press 1 they fall in an endless "this call is important to us, an agent will be with you shortly. Please continue to hold" loop.

 

[kranky]

Descartes, would an Intercept SIT tone played at the beginning of the answering machine message tell the predictive dialer the number is not in service?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm is that a standard tone for that? Bet that would work wonderfully to stop all automated systems.

Mind you, some automated systems may be good, such as sears catalog saying your order is ready, or blood donation confirmation and stuff like that. And if telemarketters catch on to this they'll find other ways then using the tone/message. I've even had telemarketers leave automated voice mails.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: kranky
Descartes, would an Intercept SIT tone played at the beginning of the answering machine message tell the predictive dialer the number is not in service?

I've never seen it work. That's not to say it doesn't work, but there's no real data available since if it did work it would just register as a busy, not in service, etc.

It's really going to depend on two things:

1) The hardware used by the predictive dialer. We used to work primarily with Dialogic (Intel) boards, servicing upwards of 64 channels at a time, both analog and digital. These cards are capable of registering a multitude of voltage drops, cadence changes, DTMF tones, etc. etc. This brings me to #2:

2) The software. There are a lot of ways to interact with the hardware, and some prefer to use what's called TAPI; others prefer to go direct to the hardware. TAPI is a higher-level library that doesn't always take advantage of the lower-level features of the cards themselves, so in this case they can sometimes miss some of the detail.

That's simplifying it a lot, but that's the basic idea.

If I had to put money on it, I'd say it wouldn't work. If we're assuming it's a company using commercial hardware (and not someone just running an auto-dialer from a machine sitting in the corner somewhere), they're going to have hardware with sophisticated call analysis.

I just checked my Dialogic documentation to see if there were any caveats, and it does give the range of frequencies it expects for their SIT detection. The range is fairly tolerant, so as long as it could faithfully reproduce the tone(s) it might work.

However, the problem is that it's easily addressed. The voice detection algorithms in most implementations is pretty simple: It looks for around a second (configurable) of human speech (between 200Hz and 3400Hz) and then the call is recognized as voice. If it instead detects a SIT, the system can still wait a few seconds for the remainder of the call after which it can then change the status from SIT to voice.

Companies like Stratasoft, Amcat and others are ahead of the curve. I don't know of any specific facility in their software to address this particular issue, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's there. I know our software doesn't have such a feature, so I may see if I can just put together a test enviroinment and try it out. It's the only way to know for sure.

Long reply, sorry!

 

[tk149]

I've been getting the "dead silence followed by a hangup" calls lately too. A couple times per night - I'm not there during the day.

I'm on the DNC lists for both state and federal. This really pisses me off. I don't have caller ID, so I have to answer the phone in case it's actually someone I want to talk to.

 

[TheInternet1980]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Answer the phone with an angry "IDENTIFY YOURSELF!!! THIS IS A DO NOT CALL STATE!"

:laugh:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: tk149
I've been getting the "dead silence followed by a hangup" calls lately too. A couple times per night - I'm not there during the day.

I'm on the DNC lists for both state and federal. This really pisses me off. I don't have caller ID, so I have to answer the phone in case it's actually someone I want to talk to.

The issue is, the goverment is exempt from that list. So are people trying to sell services, or people who want free money.

Basically, most of them are exempt. The DNCL is just something the goverment did to blindly make us think it's going to help but really it wont. Maybe 1% of the callers actually don't fall in any of the exempt categories.

We have caller ID so anything long distance we just don't pick up. If it's someone we know they'll leave a message then we'll call them back. Lot of them also spoof the caller ID so it shows up as all 0's so those are easy to spot.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

There are computers that just call in an attempt to gain valid numbers. If you hear dead silence on the other end and know it is a computer dialer, quickly hit # repeatedly. This will fool the dialer into think it has dialed a fax or machine line, and your number will not be added to their DB of valid human phone numbers.

 

[kranky]

Originally posted by: SphinxnihpS
There are computers that just call in an attempt to gain valid numbers. If you hear dead silence on the other end and know it is a computer dialer, quickly hit # repeatedly. This will fool the dialer into think it has dialed a fax or machine line, and your number will not be added to their DB of valid human phone numbers.

After reading Descartes' posts, I really doubt that would work. Those machines are more sophisticated than that.

 

[rh71]

I get so pissed at those... there is the same company from Florida or Colorado (on CID) that tells me my car warranty is expiring. I've looked up what other people have done and they press 1 to show they're interested just so they can yell at someone... well the agent who answers will elude your question of who they are. They need to be absolutely sure you are genuinely interested before they will take your information, etc. 1) They are a scam trying to collect your info for other purposes or 2) they are a fly-by-night company, who as far as I can tell, is not going to get a lot of customers when they won't even tell us the name of their company.

 

[keird]

Don't we have anyone in this industry? Perhaps if we use a code word, 'Bulk Beef' for example, we can get root access to the phone robot.

 

[PrinceofWands]

There's really no problem solving it. Just make it a capital offense to contact anyone in any way without prior authorization. Not talking about personal issues, but business/marketing ones. The first time it makes national news that every individual working for a marketing company has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for calling someone that didn't ask to be called, all unnecessary things like this will completely stop and the world will become a brighter, shinier place.