Do you remember the days before mobile phones? When being on the road meant that you could not be reached? When curly phone cords entangled in a sort of DNA structure? When you had to type the number without screen feedback and when you missed one digit, you had to start over? And when you received a call, you had no idea who it was? Nowadays we’re all used to Caller ID (or CLI), some of us even have pictures of callers popping up. I don’t know about you, but I like Caller ID, and I don’t like it when people turn it off (for some reason a lot of ‘sales’ people seem to do that). If I didn’t have this one customer who blocks their numbers, I would never answer the phone on a ‘Private number’.
Five reasons why you should NOT switch caller-ID off:
- the called person can screen your call. That is not necessarily negative, there is such a thing as ‘a bad time to call’.
- the called person can easily call you back. No need to spell out your phone number twice on the voice mail.
- if you called 5 times without getting through, both of you know that. Without Caller ID, those 5 missed calls could be from anyone, and so you have no reason to complain if it is not treated as an urgent call.
- disabling your Caller ID makes you look like a telemarketing agent or stalker. No one likes getting calls from those.
- a lot of people don’t like getting anonymous phone calls (that includes me). You’re starting the conversation with one participant already annoyed.
I don’t think I’m the only one: on the Nokia forums, most discussions on Caller ID are about how to enable it, not how to get rid of it. This is how you switch it ON:
Activate Incoming (CLIP): *30# [SEND]
Activate Outgoing (CLIR): *31# [SEND]
(via gsm-security.net)
How about you? Do you also think switched off caller-ID is impolite?
Related posts:
- Oh Nokia, won’t you make me a nice mobile phone I’ve never had a mobile phone that was not a...
- Context-aware mobile devices RIM, the maker of the fancy Blackberry devices, has filed...
- Fax 2.0: because fax won’t die in the internet age In one corner of my apartment: my fixed telephone line....
I totally agree with you. I hate it when Caller ID is switched off. Most of the time I just don’t answer such calls and hope they leave something on my voicemail. If they don’t, well, it was probably not urgent
i’m not allone with my attitude whoehoe
I never answer an anonymous phonecall, and I have a very clear message (some people say it’s a rude one, but I don’t care) on my voicemail that states that I direct all anonymous phonecalls directly to the voicemail and that I expect the anonymous caller to give me his number, so i can decide if I want to contact him or not.