Text 21739, 48 rader
Skriven 2015-03-19 13:44:32 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Dale Shipp (1:261/1466.0)
Ärende: Cell phones and Fido
============================
Hello Dale,

On Thursday March 19 2015 00:12, you wrote to me:

 DS> Since we got caller ID a couple years ago, we never answer the phone
 DS> from a name or number we do not recognize.  If they want to say
 DS> something, they can leave a message on voice mail.  We are supposed to
 DS> have a do not call list also, but it still does not prevent a lot of
 DS> calls we do not want to bother with.

Too bad your "do not call list" is so ineffective. Here I only refuse calls
that show no caller ID at all. Parties that violate the "do not call list" do
not send a caller ID, because thet would expose them. The fines are pretty
high. Of course for parties outside The Netherlands it can bnot be enforced,
but here the language barrier is an advantage. Apparantly telemarketing is not
effective across national and language barriers. It used to be a pest, but the
only calls in English I get these days are from "Microsoft".

It is safe here to answer calls with a number that one does not recognise. In
99.9% of all cases, it is a ligitimate call that one wants to take.

 DS> One other strange thing about cell phones:  there are some plans that
 DS> do not charge air time if the call is between two phones on the
 DS> same system.

We too had such plans, but I do not hear about it any more. Apparently there is
no profit in it.

 DS> Our son & DIL have such a plan.  When he was deployed in
 DS> the middle east, he would call home using Skype on a computer (cost
 DS> him $39 per year to call any phone in USA).  Skype drops out of the
 DS> internet at some place local to the number being called.  The call
 DS> would turn up on her phone as being some 800 number.  Some of those
 DS> numbers were "in the appropriate calling plan" and some were not.

Odd...

 DS> If not on the plan -- she told him to hang up and call again until
 DS> they got a free connection. Then they could talk for hours with no
 DS> further charge.  IOW, ways to game the system :-}}

Cool...


Cheers, Michiel

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