The other day someone (I won’t say who, but I think I know who and I have an increasing amount of evidence) signed me up for all kinds of junk e-mail and telemarketer phone calls. I came up with a quick solution to stop all the phone calls and it worked amazingly well. It is super easy for Android phones but it might take a little more work for iPhones due to Google Contacts.
1) This is the tough step. You need to be on the National Do Not Call List. Once you sign up for it, telemarketers have 30 days to take you off the list. Sign up for it now before the trouble begins.
2) Sign up for Google Voice
3) Download the Google Voice app for your phone
4) Have Google Voice take care of your voicemails. Why you haven’t been doing this already is a mystery. Google Voice’s voicemail transcription isn’t perfect but it’s good enough to get the gist and you don’t have to deal with voicemails.
5) Go to Gmail Contacts and assign everyone you know to one of the default groups.
6) Go back to Google Voice. Go to Settings -> Voice Settings -> Voicemail & Text. Record a new voicemail greeting. Make it something pleasant and name it “People I Know”. Record a second voicemail greeting. Make it mean and name it “Everyone Else”. Here is my “Everyone Else” message:
You are receiving this message because your number is not on a preapproved list. Please leave your name, company and number and I will call you back. Please note that this number is on the National Do Not Call Registry. Telemarketers will be reported.7) In Google Voice go to Settings -> Voice Settings -> Groups. Edit each group so that it forwards to mobile, Greeting is “People I Know”, and Call Screening is off. Now anyone not in a group will get your stern message and people you have in your Google contacts will get the friendly message. Since I implemented this I have not had a telemarketer call more than once and they have never left a message.
I did something similar, and found that some people kept calling back. So I created a custom outgoing message that was just the “disconnected” tones from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tones
Then added the offending phone # to a “junk” group and set that as the greeting. Even if it doesn’t get me off their list, at least I know they got an annoying earful!