den: (Default)
den ([personal profile] den) wrote2006-05-03 08:29 pm

Prank phone calls

For some reason a faulty automated calling system is phoning me, starting its message "Hello...", then the line drops out.

I am insanely amused to be getting prank calls from a robot.



HA HA HA

[identity profile] klishnor.livejournal.com 2006-05-03 07:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Those robot callers can be a real pain. Some won't drop the line even if you hang up on them. This is dangerous, as I've pointed out to various people, since in an emergency you can't phone for help.

I had one last year that was a major problem. Around ten a.m. on a Sunday it called me up. I listened for about fifteen seconds, then hung up and waited for a couple of minutes before phoning a friend. The stupid thing was still yakking so I listened through the thing expecting it to give up, but... It played one message, then started a aecond, then went back to the first, then... It kept this up for so long that I was able to use a neighbours phone to contact some friends in British Telecom engineering who tapped into my line and traced the call back to the offending company. Their phonelines were disabled, and a team went in on the Monday to read them the riot act.

[identity profile] dewhitton.livejournal.com 2006-05-03 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)
My phone company uses robots to let me know when my bill is overdue, so I have to listen for the company ID. If it's not them I apologise to the robot and tell it that if one of its humans would like to call then I'd me happy to hang up on them.

I'm always nice to robots. It's not their fault they're owned by stupid companies. As a bonus, when the robots take over I'll be known as the guy who was nice to them.