The future is now old man!
The only time I’ve answered an unknown number in the last decade plus is when I was applying for jobs. Everything else goes to voicemail.
Voicemail is dead too. It just gets filled with a hundred 1 seconds hangups from spam calls being sent straight to it. Every legit person and business will either show up on your ID, sent an appointment text, or an email.
Í found an option at the phone provider to just ignore all unknown numbers. My phone doesn’t even ring.
Mine does that too.
It sends them to voicemail.And my voicemail message is, "Don’t leave a voicemail, text if it’s important. "
If I don’t recognize the number (meaning it’s not already in my contacts), then you can leave a message. 98% of the time it’s a scam anyways, and the other 2% of the time it’s a doctor’s office confirming your appointment.
Call me cynical but if someone doesn’t send a message after trying to call it’s either because it’s not important or because they want you on the line so they can do ‘objection handling’ to you.
This applies to people you actually know as well as sales people.
indeed
At work we are required to call customers with a non trackable phone number. So everytime we call someone, it only shows “unnknown number”. I don’t get it how most people would answer that. I would never do that.
The hospital recently started calling with hidden numbers. So now im back to picking up those calls again because those are calls I can’t really miss.
Why would the hospital do that? Don’t they realize nobody answers calls that can’t be identified?
Lots of reasons, none of them excusable. They could want to stop people from calling back and are too lazy/can’t figure out how to set up an inbound call back route to go to a “Don’t call us back at this number” voice message; they could have switched phone services (or they’re utilizing a call center/got a new call center) that masks automatically. Those are the two that spring off the top of my head.
I don’t, ‘google screen’ answers it and transcribes the call. Funnily enough I’ve not had a single call transcribed. So that’s a search and block/report.
Community Blood Center. The very polite vampires are the only ones who put up with Google screen for me. They really like my blood.
Yeah it just looks shady.
Googling just gives pages and pages of SEO crap and scams. Any actual decent site to look up a number on?
It used to give good info, maybe 10 years ago. And remember when everyone’s number was in the phone book? Why isn’t there an online version of that anymore? Not this “buy now” scam stuff.
There really ought to be a crowdsourced database. It could even use AP.
Yeah Google actually. If it’s a legit number a business name will pop up the seo pages are all scam numbers
I believe Google and others purposely broke searching by a phone number. Many years ago I was able to even search by email. I don’t think it is SEO, but after they blocked it, SEO is the only thing that remained.
Sorry OP, but we’re urgently trying to contact you about your cars extended warranty! We save car owners major money from the shock of expensive repairs with affordable extended coverage! For as low as a cup of coffee a day you can have the peace of mind when it comes to car repairs.
“Dang man, wish you had called a month ago. Just totaled my car when I got a DUI and I’ve lost my license. Do you insure bicycles by chance?”
I can’t stop thinking about that keyboard. What is it?
Kinesis advantge.
As others have replied it’s a kinesis. If you want to build one look into dactyl shells, amoeba single switch PCBs, and a therapist for your sadism
Just realized he is using that lol. It is a fantastic keyboard. A good way to get sucked in to the custom keyboard hobby 😭
That used to be a good practice, but scammers spoof caller ID now. So that doesn’t work anymore
You also can’t easily reverse directory anymore. Now you end up with 30 pages of links to places that will charge you $40 to say that it’s an unlisted cell number.
Well they better start spoofing numbers I might actually answer otherwise they’ve accomplished nothing
Me not even Googling it because every number is fake anyway.
Funnily enough, I was returning a call the other day from an 800 number I was mostly expecting that lead to a Philippine call center and thought “If it was a scammer it’d just be pretending to be America”
Even ending up being legitimate. Wild times. Effective government, yay.
My job requires phone calls (which people asked for!) it is frustrating how many unanswered voicemails I leave every day.
And it’ll be a cold day in hell when I give out my cellphone number to a customer.
never give your personal cell number to any customer, ever. especially if you’re IT.
I got a Pixel 8 recently and it can have AI answer and screen the call for you. I just do that.
Doesn’t work on grapheneos unfortunately. Unless I’m doing something wrong
As far as I’m aware it’s just a normal program, not “AI”
The feature itself advertised that it uses Bard when it was walking through all the first time popups. That’s Google’s AI isn’t it?
Weird, I’ve been using this on my pixel 6 for a long time and I don’t even thing bard was a thing when this came out
Probably depends on the device? My sister’s 7 has no AI features either. The 8’s full of it.
They should have just called the pixel 8 the pixel AI then lol
Surprised that isn’t what the 9 will be called. It’s supposed to have even more AI features. Heck, the 8 Pro apparently can do some things the regular 8 can’t because the 8 only has 8GB of RAM.
It uses Google’s speech to text. As far as you can tell it is a recorded message saying that it’s Google’s call screening system and to give your name and why you’re calling and voice to text to tell you what they say
Then when you hang up it says goodbye to them.
I think the product that was supposed to be AI was the booking assistant
Imagine having your desk at work setup like this. Who the hell puts the monitor off to the side like that? My neck would kill me after 5 mins
I could see it happening if your job primarily involves talking to people sat on the other side of the desk.
It’s for people who always work in front of a film crew so the camera can see their faces
What I’d really like is a complicated menu system where their call can get put through but only after they’ve proven a high degree of commitment and dedication to it. Like what captchas do.
yeah kinda like every doctor office or credit card company we ever call. Imagine if everyone who called us had to go through all these hoops.
Hello thank you for calling [insert your name here]. Please listen closely as our menu options have changed. For questions, press 1. For a one-sided conversation, press 2. To leave a sarcastic jab, press 3. To leave a message with our secretary, press 4. To speak directly with [name], please catch me in person most likely wherever you met me or saw me last. Thank you. Goodbye.
‘Are you aware that our website now has an AI assistant who can handle all of your requests? Just visit www.leavemealone.co.uk for information, rewards and to manage your account. Have a nice day!..’
“Thank you for calling [Person Name]. We are experiencing a high volume of calls at the moment, and all of our customer service representatives are currently assisting other customers. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.”
90% of the time whenever you get one of those menus, you can just press 0 to get a real person on the line.
Yeah. I even did that yesterday.
There must be a way for us to implement an IVR right? Just forward our calls somewhere first?
On pixel phones the Android assistant can filter calls for you
It’s surprising when people follow the machine’s instructions and state who they are and why they are calling. It’s not a menu system, but it gets maybe the best 30% of the effect
Pixel kind of has this. Seems to be working since I haven’t gotten a voicemail in months 🤷♂️…filters out most non contacts calls before they bother getting screened.
yall been googling phone numbers? i just press the power button once.
It trickier when you’re actually expecting a call but you don’t know what number they will call from, like a job recruiter.
Honestly I just screen these calls as well, call them back immediately if they leave a relevant voicemail, and apologize for not picking up as “the spam and scam calls have got so prevalent that I screen literally every call these days.”
I had a recruiter just today laugh and say “yeah, it’s gotten pretty bad, I do the same thing.” So it’s not like they are going to hold it against you these days.
Me wearing a suit to use Google.
