Hasta La Ideas

One of the reasons I dislike using the phone for work is because eleven years ago my number belonged to a guy named Dave. This Dave character isn’t a former employee, he’s just some bloke who has fallen on hard times with his bills and who constantly has creditors calling after him. I thought for awhile he might be using my number on new credit applications, except I once asked a caller trying to harass Dave how she got this number and she said it was the fifth number they were trying for him, one their records showed working in 1999.

No matter how many times I tell the collection people that this is not a current number for Dave, no matter how many times their calls go to voice mail and they hear my greeting, no matter what I do to get the folks to stop calling, the calls continue to pour into my phone relentlessly. And, because I don’t typically know the numbers of the legitimate people calling me, I waste time answering the collection calls and listening to the messages at least long enough to know to delete them.

Thankfully, our office phone system has a new feature on it where I can type numbers into a form and have the harassing creditors’ numbers blocked. And, there was already a service on our system where every number comes up on caller ID, even ones that the callers believe are spoofed or hidden. Unfortunately, the new blocking method means I have to get at least the initial call to be able to capture the number, and also some creditors use hundreds of outgoing numbers so it can still be a three or four day project blocking calls.

Now that the number of collection calls are starting to reduce, I’ve been wondering how people on cell phones and home landlines deal with situations like this. I can’t be the only person out there being harassed by persistent wrong numbers. So, yesterday, when Lifehacker ran their post “What’s the Best Way to Block a Number from Calling my Cellphone?” I let out a very happy squeal.

Adam Dachis, author of the post, suggests transferring your number to a Google Voice account where you have similar controls like I now have on my office phone:

1. Log in to your Google Voice account.
2. Find the call you want to block (or the voicemail that resulted from it).
3. Select the checkbox next to the call or voicemail.
4. Click the “more” link underneath the call.
5. Select “Block Caller.”

He gives other options that don’t include transferring your cell number, and there are some really good ideas in the comments, too. If unwanted calls are cluttering up your phone line, I strongly recommend checking out Lifehacker’s “What’s the Best Way to Block a Number from Calling my Cellphone?“

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