Seems good. But like Mike says will it work on all the systems?

Adithya

i got to tell you its a great theory and may work on some systems. but i know a fair amount of systems where it doesn't go by this.

Mike.leger

As Mike said, I can tell you without a doubt it doesn't work for all. Have been using it for years but, it seems to have cut down on the free vacation scam type calls.

SirSmiley

There were commercial devices that did this same trick that I saw on infomercials a few years ago. They were called the "Telezapper", and connected inline on your phone cord.

[www.telezapper.com]

Madd_Matt

Our home phone has been on the do not call list and since then we have never received a telemarketer call. I guess were some of the lucky few that get ignored.

Woodsyx

Phreaking at its best.

stevo

Do Not Call list has protected me from most such calls but, as a New Hampshire resident who just suffered through the agonies of a robo-dialing-fueled campaign season, I am reminded that non-profits and charities and such need not follow the DoNotCall rules, damn their eyes.

gyffes

I control who rings my phone, not the caller. Voicepulse VoIP's has a filtering feature that allows me to route incoming calls based on caller i.d.(other service may have a similar feature). My own setup sends all unknown callers to voicemail, a copy of which is sent to my e-mail. If I see a caller I want to ring through in the future, I add a filter for that number. I have a couple of hundred of these filters that may ring, call hunt, forward, or even play this "Out of Service" tone for individual numbers. It's been over a year since I picked up an unwanted call. Cost: $15 for unlimited local and 200 mins LD, including just every feature you can imagine.

silphium

Yup, the telemarketers wised up and the tone doesn't work all the time. Some of the autodialers now have voice recognition and activate when it hears "hello" or some other greeting. Some autodialers will hang up if it detects a long pause/silence after the ringing tone stops. You can test this next time you see a previous telemarketer/bot on your caller ID. Just pick up the phone and don't say anything. After a few seconds, you should hear a click and the bot will drop the call. If it works, you can re-record your answering machine greeting and wait a few seconds before saying your actual greeting/message.

greenbot

Or, if it's your cell phone (which is my home phone), just use YouMail as your voicemail and use the "Ditch caller" feature.

LubsyB

@greenbot: yep, I've seen this too.

It's quite awkward, for me to answer the phone, say hello, and then have them say hello back....

Then we nearly get into a "Can you hear me" sharades hahaha.

The DNC registry seems to be working, not many political calls yet, I may consider adding this to our answering machine though :) But as anything (antivirus, lol) - nothing is 100%...

Lately, when marketers call (you know, banks, credit card places, etc...that we have "opted in" when we signed across the dotted line), I just ask them politely to add this number to their do not call list, and the calls from BoA have decreased thus far...

ahoier

Before the do-not-call registry, the Telezapper worked very well for us. Not 100%, but definitely made an impact.

rogerkaplan

How do you ask the caller to be put on their own do not call list when its an automated system? Some politcal survey automated bot called me last night. I tried pushing *, 0 and # hoping to get dumped to someone so I could ask to be removed from the list. No luck with that though. any ideas?

spacelord

The Telezapper really worked. I mean, it had one of those awful, cheezy TV commercials, but even with it set to the very first part of the tone it cut down the number of telemarketers we heard from by a significant amount.

kang

What would be great is there was some way to automate this process with the list of telemarketer's and credit collection agency's secret Caller ID numbers they use like listed at NumberZoom . Meantime, I will just continue to screen my calls.

BMNB1tches

Remember those little tone dialers from radio shack that stored your saved numbers for when you made a pay phone call? Like back in the 80's?! Finally another use for them.

It was a little black box with a keypad. You punched in your ten or twenty numbers you wanted saved. And then picked up a phone, pressed the saved key on the box and held it up to the mouth piece. It would play the phone number tone and dial for you. LOL. Was so high tech back then. Makes me laugh now. But your Gramma could even learn how to use one.

molife

"Our brother site Consumerist says a reader who kept getting automated debt collection calls added the tone to the beginning of his voicemail greeting..."

Or you could pay your bills. How 'bout that?

foxmajik

That only works with collectors who have some clue who they are calling.

Prior to marriage I had a very common first and last name and got my share of calls the were for (my actual name here), but a *different* (my actual name). After marriage, I had some deadbeat inlaws - some fairly distant, including one with a name like mine. 2 years ago, a medical practice I saw decades ago, as a child, transposed my old account # with that of a more recent patient and came after me.

Some of these guys are pernicious and have to call 40 times before they are convinced that okay, maybe this used to be John Doe's phone #, but it's not anymore.

memphis9