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We used to pick up every call back then because 9.8/10, it wasn't some scam call
Seriously. People make up all kinds of explanations for why no one actually uses phones but few seem to have noticed that it's because we got to a point where a majority of our calls were shit we didn't want.
Kinda the same thing with the mail. My letter carrier gets irritated that I don't empty my box everyday, but he's the one stuffing it with two pounds of trash every day. I get like two letters a week they are actually relevant and the rest is garbage or actual dangerous Identity theft risk they I have to destroy.
Well, that and I never really liked being held hostage on the phone by family I'm not even super close with. They stay safely tucked away and out of my business on Facebook now lol
I moved the house landline to a Google Voice account 15 years ago. Set it to DND so all calls go to voicemail. G transcribes any actual words and emails me. spammers leave a few seconds of silence usually. I mark them as spam but they call everyday from different numbers so fuck me, no text transcribed, ignore. if a person leave a silent voicemail, must not have been that important. house phone never rings. bliss
because we got to a point where a majority of our calls were shit we didn’t want.
Holy crap... so much this. I despise cellphones for this very reason.
Telemarketers have existed for a long time, and they would usually call during dinner. We would answer because there was no caller ID and thus no way to know if it was somebody we knew or not.
And then we hung up.
What's changed are three things:
- There used to be an upcharge for long-distance telephone calls. So even though telemarketing calls existed, they wouldn't be long-distance calls from some call centre across the country because that would be prohibitively expensive for the marketer.
- Calls used to be metered and charged by the minute or by the call. Every time a call was connected, the clock started ticking and the phone companies started billing. That means it wasn't economical to make thousands of bulk cold calls because you'd have to pay a nickel per minute and that would cost a lot of money and labour. On top of that, the people you'd call would get angry at you for wasting their airtime (especially on cell phones) and thus would likely not buy whatever you're selling anyway. On top of that, angry people would sometimes get revenge by faxing you pieces of black cardstock.
- The telephone network was analogue and physical. Nowadays you can outsource cold calls to a foreign country and sign up for a VoIP service that lets you make hundreds of calls a day through automated dialling completely anonymously, whereas just a few decades ago, you'd have to purchase a physical dialling machine for hundreds of dollars, hook it up to a physical telephone line, and call customers knowing that they can trace your calls back to you, and on top of that, successfully sue you for $500 per unsolicited call (in America) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act 1991.
Are you sure you don't want to switch your long-distance provider?