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Posted: 19-09-2009 22:27 Post subject: Phone Weirdness

A couple of years ago I picked up the phone at home to make a call and instead of the usual dial tone I got what sounded like people in an office chattering away to themselves. I couldnt dial out and didnt get a reply when I said "hello?" I put the phone down and picked it up again a couple of times but still got these people gabbing away to themselves. Not sure why I thought it was an office but it was echoey and sounded like a room with several people in it. This kept up for about 20 minutes with me putting the phone down and picking it up until finally I got a dial tone.

On a weirdness scale I suppose it doesnt rate very highly but it was certainly disconcerting. Thing is Im sure Ive read on here about this happening before. Anyone point me in the right direction?

Posted: 19-09-2009 22:43 Post subject:

youcould have picked the phone up at the precise moment a call centre automatically called you but they didnt actuially man it. when this happens the line is open on their side and they have to close it before you can dial out. its happened to me a few times and its infuriating because you cant take or send calls until theyve put the phone down their end.

Posted: 20-09-2009 10:03 Post subject:

It's a call centre - they seem to have discovered ways of being even more annoying than ever recently, including automated ones that continue their speil even if you hang up. I was expecting an important call and had to put up with an 'IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT INFORMATION' recording for about half an hour despite trying repeatedly to cut it off and a constantly looped recording from the bank which must have been running for about two hours before I picked it up again and then would only stop once I'd gone through the rigmarole of the switching system to eventually talk to an actual person*.

What is it with those IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT MESSAGES anyway...? I've been out of work recently and I've been getting seven or eight every day. Does anyone EVER listen to them beyond 'Hello, this is AN IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT MESSAGE...'...?

* Resulting in an exchange along the following lines:

'How may I help you today, sir?'

'Err, you rang me...'

'Oh.' Pause. 'Any idea what we might have wanted?'

Which I guess means that this automated system isn't particularly popular at the other end of the line either...

Posted: 21-09-2009 22:26 Post subject:

Yeah call centre, I can go with that. Bloody things

Posted: 23-09-2009 15:05 Post subject:

The same thing happened to me about twenty years ago when I lived in California. I was working at a car dealership one early evening when the phone at my desk rang. I picked it up and heard what sounded like a family talking over dinner. I called to them, but got no response. I tried hanging up a few times, but to no avail. Finally, just before I was getting ready to go home, I checked the line again and had dial tone.

Just one of those things that happens through the phone system as designed, I guess.

Posted: 23-09-2009 22:57 Post subject:

basically you have a big dialing system fed with millions of phone numbers and names.

you'll have 10-500 people sitting in front of computers and in each circumstance the dialing system calls #'s ahead of time and then keeps them in a queue sitting there idle until the next person becomes available to start the call, during this leeway time, you will notice yourself picking up the phone and sitting there saying, hello hello with no answer.. then a few minutes later up comes a voice asking to speak with your name, sometimes brutally mispronouncing the name hinting to you that you don't know this person, which usually prompts us to say he/she doesn't live here anymore even though you know that they're calling for you

IF you do end up hearing office noise, chances are you have a person who does this job, not really doing their job Very Happy

they were probably sitting there pretending like they were working all the mean while, you yourself may have been entertaining to listen to depending on how crazy you started to trip when you thought something more was happening HEH

Posted: 30-09-2009 06:34 Post subject:

It's so annoying when they ring and then have you saying "hello'' several times till you hang up with frustration. Had a call a few weeks ago and when I said "Hello?" it paused then said " That is not an appropriate answer". Bang went my phone as I wondered what was lol but I suppose it was the end of someone else's call.
Also I had an forward saying that if you hit the hash key a few times it throws your name out of their list, so I've been doing that lately. Supposed to be on the do not call register but they still ring.

Posted: 20-11-2009 13:14 Post subject:

My wife picked up the phone the other day and a man says "Is [Danforth] there?" I was working from home at the time, so to find out whether it was worth taking to me she asked "May I ask who's calling?"

Short pause.

"NO!"

Click.

Probably end-of-shift larks by bored temps. I've worked in a call centre before (once. Never again!) and after several hours at the phones you go a bit strange. You start selling windows in a variety of comedy accents, or pretend to be stoned ("Windows, man... want some? Windows!!")

Posted: 20-11-2009 14:51 Post subject:

If I don't get a response to "good morning," I hang up as fast as I can, because it's almost certainly phone spam. If I get ten calls in a day, 9 will be phone spam and one will be my husband.

What I love are people who call and ask: "Is this a business?" If you don't know who I am, don't call me! And then there's people who call you in your home and demand to know who they're talking to before they'll identify themselves! And people who hang up when they hear your voice, because "sorry, wrong number" is too much bother to say. And of course the phone spammers who do their own dialling but call day after day after day after day until you're really thoroughly rude to them about three times in a row, when they'll finally cross your number off their communal list.

Posted: 20-11-2009 22:02 Post subject:

I thought the guy who hangs up when I answer the phone was my wife's boyfriend Embarassed

Posted: 20-11-2009 23:14 Post subject:

Since most of my communications are by email, my phone is just for emergencies and for internet access.

Recently I've been getting at least one spam phone call per day.

So now I answer the phone with "Swanvale Sewage!"

Then some female recorded voice says "Hallo, I'm Fiona... etc"

So I respond with several strong Anglo-saxon words, and put the phone down.

Makes me feel good, anyway! Twisted Evil

Posted: 21-11-2009 08:55 Post subject:

Had a really odd phone call one night this week. My daughter answered the phone and some woman asked for a Chris and was told she had the wrong number. She said well you live in .... don't you? Then she said she wanted my daughter to go and put her name and number in their letterbox, gave their nationality and their number.
My daughter thought this was very odd as why wouldn't you ring them direct so she declined., as noone in the court wants to go near them as they are the only feral family who live here.
We still thought it was odd that she had rung us and when we met a neighbouring family at the shops today the same thing had happened to them except the lady thought she was being asked to have a letter sent to her house and to put it in the other's box.
She doesn't have English as a first language and they were quite concerned as they too could not work out how someone could get our phone numbers from a house number.
As my daughter said it could have been a drug dealer or a debt collector but it just seemed strange, why not post to their house or ring them?

Posted: 21-11-2009 15:56 Post subject:

There is such a thing as a reverse telephone book, where you can look up the phone number and find out who owns it and where they live; there may also be directories arranged by address. That used to be standard, before telephones - it's great for researching your property! But the motivation is strange, and it's just as strange that she didn't lead the request with; "I know this is peculiar, but there's this situation and I was hoping you could help me because." Why would you expect anybody to be willing to do such a thing without a plausible reason?

Posted: 18-12-2009 22:15 Post subject:

At work in the U.S. we get constant (sometimes twice a day) calls from people (usually based in India, by the accent) asking us to update our online business listing. They never give a name or number, and don't respond to our requests to stop calling...it's not sinister or anything, just irritating. I have trouble figuring out why it's worth it to some nameless company to outsource a call center to call us as often as they do for information when they never get any.

Posted: 02-01-2010 13:04 Post subject:

I came across this page of instructions about how to trick two people into thinking that the other had called them.

http://gizmodo.com/5438051/how-to-execute-the-ultimate-phone-prank-with-skype

This may well answer some mysteries, or it might lead to a spate of prank callers. Never mind!