Blocking Calls
If I ever work from home, or I'm off work with some life threatening lurgy, or looking after one of the children when they are chundering spectacularly from both ends, I'm always surprised how many times the phone rings. I race through the house to find a phone handset (they are never on the base stations) in case it's an emergency, and breathlessly press the call button.
Then any of the following tends to happen:“Hello, we are calling about the recent accident you had” (I had no accident)“Hello, we are calling about the payment protection insurance you have on product X” (I didn't buy product X)“Hello, we are calling because we have detected a virus on your computer” (I love these ones, and actually engage them in conversation if they catch me in the right mood)“Hello, we are delighted to call you about the free weekend away you have won” (which involves going to a seminar and sitting through a sales pitch)“Hello, are you happy with your current electricity supplier?” (Yes. Goodbye)“Hello, we've called to bring you good news about the Lord” (Goodbye)It goes on, and on, and on. You run to pick up the phone, and then feel guilty because you put the phone down on the person at the other endthat is probably on minimum wage in a call center somewhere.
Well all of that is about to end. Not because we are sick of it, but because our old phone broke. We would probably have carried on picking the phone up forever, had our old phone not broken. Today I went and bought a new phone. It has a shiny sticker on the box advertising that it has the “award winning Call Guardian” on it.
Ooh”Call Guardian”what's that?It turns out anybody that's not in the contact list gets to talk to a robot firstyou then get to choose if you're going to talk to the caller or not, and the robot deals with getting rid of them if necessary (and adds them to a “never let them through” list, or a “straight to answerphone” list).Apparently you can re-record all of the robot messages with your ownso instead of some professional voice actor lady talking to callers, you can have some fun. I'm not going to, because I KNOW I'll end up being sarcastic.“Hello, you're not on our list so we're going to put you through to the answerphone where you can beg us to pick the phone up next time.“or”Hello, we really don't listen, do you. Goodbye.“Maybe that's a bit rudewhich is why we're leaving the stock message on the phone. I did suggest to the kids that we all shout “UNLUCKY!” in unison if somebody is on the blocked list (meaning the phone doesn't even tell us about the call).
Anyway. Good riddance to cold callers at last. I guess the only shame is that advertisers will not have the pleasure of talking to our youngest daughter, who is pretty comical on the phone at the best of timesshe picked the phone up yesterday, and without pausing for a beat, shouted “WHAT D'YOU WANT?” into the handset