Telephones - a point to consider ?

[TeePee]

A fact - which raises a paradox
Most of us have received unsolicited, unwanted phone calls.
Some of us will have put in place 'Call refused if caller witholds their number'.
Some people / organisations need to withold number for quite valid reasons, such as "I am making this call through a company switchboard with only one number but many extensions:  if you try to call me back, the switchboard won't know to whom to connect you".

'Number witheld' status is not signified / bleeped / flashed to someone who picks up a company phone, although it's probably somewhere in company rules.

A KC organisation tried to tell me something was awaiting collection:  couldn't, because my phone was in 'Call refused if number witheld'. The caller did not know her phone was 'Number witheld'.

The paradox:
is it morally right to invoke 'Call refuse' ?:
do people have a right to expect to get through ?
Is it right to invoke 'Number witheld' ?
Do people have a right to know who is calling ?

But most of all, be careful about what you WON'T get if settings at the two ends of a call are incompatible.

[Russell Brown]

It is a tricky thing which could be improved by technology.

At work, anonymous callers get shunted to a message telling them that we don't accept calls from withheld numbers but inviting the caller to leave a message; very few do and it's cut out a lots of SPAM calls (a quick check in the log shows 26 since June the 2nd). Our genuine customers who withhold their number can enter a secret PIN to bypass this mechanism (which also means we know who they are).

At home, BT do not give us this sort of option so they just get rejected (a 'feature' for which we pay BT several pounds a month and that we instigated because our home number appeared on a FAX list and we ended up getting calls from anonymous fax machines throughout the night).

Moral? Dunno... but I wouldn't open the front door to an anonomised caller wearing a balaclava so don't feel that uncomfortable doing it to people phoning me.

[PhilT]

Perhaps an outgoing message to the effect "please release your caller ID by dialling 1470 in front of my number" would help in a proportion of the cases (people who withhold by default but don't know how to override).

Personally I think it should be mandatory for all businesses and organisations to used a presentation caller ID. Maybe I can't use it to call back but if I see (say) the phone number for Peterborough City Hospital switchboard or the Doctor's surgery then I have a good clue how to respond.

I have encountered a few spammers using this approach - if you call back it says they were calling about xyz and you don't need to return their call.