For the past 12 months I’ve been getting some really weird calls. Every few weeks, a phone number with an 08 landline prefix would call me, repeatedly, sometimes for hours. When I would answer the call, all I’d hear was DTMF tones being played down the line, before the caller hung up on me.
If I didn’t pick up the call, or if I rejected it, the call would go straight to my MessageBank, filling it with creepy silent messages.
There’s no way around it. I either turn my phone off and then turn it back on the next day and spend an hour going through the messages and deleting them – such a tedious task – or I sit there and try to ignore my phone ringing (or vibrating) for six to eight hours until my battery goes dead.
Not to mention the annoyance of the phenomenon pretty much disabling my ability to actually use the phone properly, since incoming calls interrupt my apps, browsing, and anything else I’m doing at the time.
Fun.
So I called Telstra – The Australian telecommunications and media company which happens to be myservice provider out here in Oz – and ask “Yo, omgwtfbbq bro?”
Turns out I have a “recycled” phone number. My friendly Telstra rep also informed me she didn’t have the ability to block a number from calling me and that I should use the phone’s “custom ringtone for this user” feature and set a silent ringtone for it. What a BRILLIANT solution. Not.
Telstra’s problem “fix” doesn’t stop the calls coming in, doesn’t stop it filling up my MessageBank, doesn’t stop it killing my battery and doesn’t stop it annoying me!
My Telstra rep then has the gall to tell me to use my phone’s own ability to block numbers, leaving me to explain that I’ve got an iPhone and it can’t do that.
This is the point my friendly rep stops being so friendly and starts getting a tad feisty at me, putting on her pompous voice to say “Yes they do, just google it, jeez,” abruptly ending the conversation.
Of course, I had already Googled it, and the solution offered is a PAID app that simply sets a silent tone for that caller. Back to square one.
Recycled numbers are nothing new. Australia is pretty famous for being badly prepared for future expansion. From the very early days of seven digit phone numbers, when we all had to endure putting a “9” in front of “most” numbers, depending on where you lived.
Then Australia ran out of mobile numbers after assigning only certain ranges for each carrier, and was forced to open the pools up and change how the whole system worked.
When that failed, Australian carriers came up with the brilliant idea of recycling numbers, which in theory works fine, as long as you stick to the procedure of allowing a fair amount of time for a number to die off before throwing it back into the mix.
Most providers consider this fair amount of time to be a year, but Telstra figures a week or two should be plenty. I recently found out Telstra is SUPPOSED to let a number sit for six months, but the firm apparently ignores this minor detail.
Growing increasingly frustrated, I called back, only to be told my only solution is to get a new phone number, on a new SIM, on an entirely new account.
No, Telstra can’t change the number on the existing account.
No, Telstra can’t block that number from calling me.
No, Telstra can’t offer any other solution, except for me to start an entirely new mobile account.
This just isn’t acceptable, as my cell phone also happens to be the one I use for work, making it hugely inconvenient to change.
Still, eventually, I was forced to give up and request a new phone number. I received my new SIM card, backed up my phone, changed the cards and spent the next two hours setting everything up all over again; phone settings, MessageBank, calling/texting all my friends with the new number, updating stakeholders at work, updating my email signatures, updating my workmates and our internal directory (which involves putting a ticket in with our IT Services dep’t), and contacting various services that need to have my mobile number like our cable TV company, internet ISP, etc.
But despite all the hassle, it was an awesome feeling to finally have the comfort of knowing that finally this was MY number.
Then the calls started.
“Hey where are you, ya dirty b*stard? We’re at the pub waiting!”
Me: “Um.. sorry, whoever you think owns this number doesn’t own it anymore, I just got it from Telstra”
“Haha very funny! hurry the hell up!” *hangs up*
An hour later, more calls.
That night, more calls and texts.
1AM in the morning, more calls. This time from a VERY inebriated female going ballistic at me every time I answered. Every time I’d nicely try and explain the situation, she’d hang up, wait five minutes, then call back and start again.
This went one for the entire Easter weekend.
I’m now back at work, and back on the phone to Telstra trying to find a number that ISN’T recycled.
In the modern age of personal communications, why has the phone system seemingly been left behind?
Everyone who uses the Internet knows how easy it is to block people from our Instant Messaging, email, social networks, etc.
We have the ability to block a user, add/remove “friends,” automatically filter spam/unwanted-messages, and control every aspect of our privacy online, but our most intimate form of contact short of physical presence – the telephone – somehow got left back in a 1970s time warp.
Unless your manufacturer specifically programs in an ability to control who can call you, you’re pretty much up the creek with no paddle.
Whether you have the unfortunate luck of getting a recycled number, or have an ex who wants to harass you, or a mate who’s drunk and won’t stop calling, you, the user, have NO control over it. They can continue calling you, texting you, and invading your privacy as MUCH as they want, and all you can do is either turn off your phone or try to ignore it.
The former is not usually an option these days and the latter, is a lot harder than it seems.
Perhaps it’s time I disable my voice/text plan entirely and go completely internet-based for any communications. People can Gchat me, email me, tweet me, IM me, ping! me, Skype me or Google me.
At least that way, if I want to, I can simply block you.
You can read more from Sen on the blog Ctrlrefresh
