CallBlocker screens your phone calls: choose your interception message
I could start a rant about how much I hate telesales calls, but I think most people hate them so I won’t . Even after I’ve added myself to the Telephone Preference Service block list, unscrupulous automated systems from overseas still phone me, silently intimidating me or shouting at me in a faux American accent how lucky I am to have won something somewhere. Then there’s the local companies that seem to be totally ignorant of TPS…
OK, sorry, I said I wouldn’t rant.
For a mere 50 quid it’s now possible to screen the calls automatically. Plug the CallBlocker into your phone and it will intercept all calls and present them with a challenge. The default one is: “You have reached CallBlocker and not an answering machine. All commercial sales calls and fund raising requests are not accepted, place this number on your do not call list. Personal and invited callers press 5 on your touch phone to proceed.”
If that’s too formal, you can record your own greeting message.
Now, it does rely somewhat on the cooperation of any human telesales person not just to go ahead and press 5 – though they’d soon incur my wrath if they tried that one. It could also get tedious for your friends and relations to have to listen to your blocking message every time, so hopefully it’s possible to just press 5 straight away to be put through.
It’s a tempting gadget, but the default message is way too boring. What message would you record to deter unwanted calls?
CallBlocker (via Red Ferret Journal)
