A while ago I developed a strategy for dealing with calls from call centres. I’ve a new one now and it seems to be working. It’s also kind of fun.
Basically, if you ask BT nicely, you can get a second number for your line. It’s an extra feature (‘Call Sign‘) that you can get by itself for £1.75 a month or as a bundle with three or four other features like Caller ID. So that’s £21 a year for this, basically.
The great thing about your second number is that if anyone dials it, your phone makes a completely different ringing noise.
So what you do is you give out your main number to everyone you don’t like or don’t care about and your second number to everyone you do like and care about. Then, whenever anyone calls the main number, you just let it go through to your answer machine; if they call your second number, you answer it.
It’s great. You never have to answer a “courtesy call from MBNA” again.
More amusingly, as I mentioned in my last entry on the subject, overseas call centres take quite a while to connect once you’ve picked up the phone. I’ve just re-recorded my answer phone message. It’s not short – about six or seven seconds – but it’s shorter than the delay at their end.
So now, every time a call centre rings, my answer phone gets filled up with a stranger person from India going “HELLO?” at the top of their voice, because they didn’t hear my answer phone message.
Very funny.