I once kept getting calls from a home siding company; the person would say that a representative had been in the neighborhood and noted that my house really was in need of siding. I would patiently tell them that I already had siding on the house and it was only a couple of years old. I still kept receiving calls. Finally I made an appointment with them for the representative to come out and talk to me. When he showed up at my door, he had a very puzzled look on his face and said, "Ma'am, you already have siding on your house. Why did you make an appointment? You are wasting my time!" I told him his company had wasted my time for the last year calling me and I had told them I already had siding so I thought I would just waste some of their time! I never got another call from that company.

Most all sales calls have a private or no info showing about the call. When you get that showing answer with your state Attorney General's Office, How may I help you? My DDs use to do this before the do not call list was available. When I can get a word in I say Put me on the company's do not call list.

I don't understand how telemarketers stay in business. What type person would buy anything from a telemarketer ?

Especially the charities - who gives out their CC number to someone who calls you on the phone and says "We are from XYZ charity"?

I am sooooooo sick of all of the calls. I am on the Do Not Call List. Lot of good that does. When I am home I sometimes get 10 or 15 calls a day. Years ago when I was single I bought a condo. OMG the home improvement calls made me nuts. After my third time being disturbed from my after work nap someone called and wanted to put on a room addition. I was in a second floor condo. I said yes I needed a room addition-- they could run it uphill on stilts over the building behind me. They hung up on me.
Sometimes I just go along with what they are selling and make up stupid things like that.. They usually hang up on me.

I love my setup. We have the system where if I'm watching TV, we get caller id on the screen, not just the phone.

I was told by a government employee that you need to register at least every two years so you don't drop off the list. I have it set on my calendar to go online every January 1st and redo all m numbers, home and all cell phones. The telemarketing companies have used his as a loophole to not pay the fines. It takes literally minutes and covers your butt too. Hope this helps

I applaude you all. You've gotten pretty creative in handling this annoyance.

For some time we've been getting up to 10 calls/day saying "This is your mortgage company, _____________. Before we can continue we need to verify some information. What is our name? What is your mortgage number." I've told them, "Since you called me, prove to me you are who you say you are." They have no way of doing this, even is it is a legitimate call. So I tell them, send me a letter. Eventually we sent a cease and decist letter for phone calls and to only contact us by posted mail. Which they never did. We needed this info, but when we tried to call back, that person was always on the phone & we got put on hold for an indefinite period of time. Finally talked with supervisors only. Now there seams to be some kind of law to reduce missed payments so it doesn't go into foreclosure. Same kind of call. What illogical idiot politician made such a law that gives identy theives and scammers an automatic entrance into private records.

As to auto dialers, etc., if there's no one on the line when I answer, I don't want to talk, wait, listen and can't talk back anyway, so I hang up immediately. If it's anykind of unsolicited call, I interupt, say, "Not interested, by" and hang up immediately. We get very few calls. We've been on the DNC list for years. we don't give out information ever, always, don't donate to anything beyond our Church, membership lists write, DO NOT PUBLISH, next to email address and cell phones.

The thing with the charities & political org. is that they are not governed by the do not call list (at least in our state).
I donate where I can but I can make up my own mind about which charities to give to and who to vote for.
I REALLY dislike the charities that start out with "you were so generous last year /you won't have to send it in for 2 weeks or whatever time span, when I know I haven't ever given them anything. I looked into caller ID and for me it would be $5 a month, I should not to pay to avoid the harassment.

There are some funny recordings of what people do when answering telemarketers on Youtube. The funniest one was as soon as this one man would answer the phone he would say "911 what is your emergency?" The caller would say I'm sorry I didn't call 911. The man would go into this long tirade about how it's illegal to call 911 if you didn't have a legitimate emergency and starts asking for the callers name and phone number. The next thing you'd hear is a click.

At my house 800 numbers go un-answered and if a call shows up as "Unknown Caller" on the caller ID, without picking up I say "Unknown Answerer" and go about my business. It's always a waste of time to try and request that they take your name off their list.

thats exactly what we did a few years ago. Saves money and useless calls. Anything we don't recognize goes to voice mail, then if it's a telemarketer we block it on our cell phones. Been pretty quiet around here.