Harassing Phone Calls

If you’ve been plagued by a series of phone calls where no one is on the other end when you answer, I have at least one explanation for what may be happening.

For the past few weeks, at various times of the day, we’ve received phone calls from an unrecognized name, and when we’ve answered, the other party had hung up. Countless times I’ve asked “who called?” only to be told, “I don’t know, they hung up”.

Today, I think I figured it out. When I answered the mysterious call today (caller id: GC – EASYTEL HU) there was someone on the other end of the line … well, not someone, but rather a recording. Seems they were looking for someone who apparently gave them my phone number. They left an 800 number (877-405-3189) so I called them back. They told me who they were looking for, harassed me by insisting I knew the person, or was the person’s husband and were otherwise not very helpful. They wouldn’t tell me who they represented or anything, but did promise to remove my number from their list of numbers to call.

They did answer the phone as “Van Ro”, so I googled that name (I won’t link to them, but you can do the same search if interested). I called their corporate offices and found out they are a collection agency. What they do is robocall many, many phone numbers and when someone answers a taped message operator is supposed to kick in. However, their system is broken, and until today, we didn’t hear the recording, but instead picked up to a dial tone.

Of all the problems in life, this one is pretty unimportant, but if you are on the receiving end of hang-ups that don’t seem to end, there’s a good chance it’s a collection agency calling by mistake.

I won’t even get started on the robocalls trying to sell us a satellite TV system; the ones where even after you hang up the phone they still manage to keep the line open … I thought that was illegal, though under the example set by our lawbreaker-in-chief I guess that’s yet another law that can safely be ignored.