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The thing that not enough people bring up is the rampant robocalling. Before I left the US around a year and a half ago, I was getting 2-3 calls a day. Basicall

The thing that not enough people bring up is the rampant robocalling. Before I left the US around a year and a half ago, I was getting 2-3 calls a day. Basically, if I ever got a call from a number not in my contact list, I would never answer. I know I'm not the only one like this, but I don't have any numbers to back it up. Even in Germany where robocalling seemingly doesn't exist, I still have this reflex, so it makes me seriously consider the validity of any phone-based polling.

losteric 6y ago
> Basically, if I ever got a call from a number not in my contact list, I would never answer. I know I'm not the only one like this, but I don't have any numbers to back it up. huh... I have literally never met a single person that answers cold calls on personal lines, this was already SOP when I was a kid. Seriously, who's picking up those calls?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  This wasn't SOP for me when I was growing up. We never got spam calls. Only the occasional wrong number.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    +1 to this, although I can say that if I had caller ID, I probably wouldn’t have answered unknown numbers, even when I was growing up.
- andybak 6y ago
  > Seriously, who's picking up those calls? People who don't live in countries where the problem is this bad? I'm in the UK and I get about 1 unsolicited call a month. If I didn't pick up numbers I didn't recognize I would have missed my Doctor (this week), several new client leads and multiple friends and acquaintences that changed their number.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Also people older than ~60 who still have a landline at home, and grew up without caller-id. Answering unknown phone calls was normal, because you never knew who the caller was.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      You don’t have to be 60+ to have grown up without caller ID. I’m much younger than that, and we certainly didn’t have it for at least most of my childhood. However, I do not have a landline at home now, and have not in many years.
    - rjsw 6y ago
      In the UK, doctors don't provide caller-id, not even the number of a hospital switchboard.
  - mason55 6y ago
    Wouldn’t all those people leave voicemails?
    - randomchars 6y ago
      In some countries, voicemail is not a thing.
    - andybak 6y ago
      I guess so but I loathe voicemail more than I loathe the occasional marketing call. It's easier to just answer given the overall chance of it being a waste of time.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        Just let your voicemail fill up, if it bothers you that much. If you miss an important call, it will show up as a missed call on your phone.
      - bentcorner 6y ago
- sneak 6y ago
  I get 3-5 robocalls a month. The phone number on my website rings a phone on my desk. When it rings, I pick it up.
- sgc 6y ago
  Anyone with a job that requires them to talk to people with unknown numbers calling. There is one bias right there. Probably people who don't get that many cold calls outside elections, which must fit some sort of demographic as well. But the better pollsters don't just call. They use various online methods as well. 538 lists the following methods, and rates a pollster higher if they use more of them: Live — Live telephone interviews, including cellphones. Landline — Live telephone interviews, not including cellphones. Live* — Live telephone interviews, but FiveThirtyEight cannot confirm whether cellphones are included. IVR — Interactive voice response, otherwise known as automated polls or “robopolls.” Online — Poll conducted by internet; generally, this means by web browser, but it’s inclusive of text message or application-based polling of mobile phones. Mail — By U.S. mail or other “snail mail” service.
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    >Anyone with a job that requires them to talk to people with unknown numbers calling. Exactly this. I'm forced to answer a lot of calls even when I think it's 80% likely that it's a spam call. I own a business and need to keep my employees fed with work. My likelihood of landing a contract with a person drops by about half if I don't pick up the phone right away.
- lanius 6y ago
  Couriers often call me when they're unable to get into my building to deliver packages. One time I was expecting a delivery, I answered a call from an unknown number figuring it was the courier. To my annoyance, it was a cold-calling recruiter.
- parliament32 6y ago
  Hell, this was SOP before we even had Caller ID! If you weren't expecting a call, you let it go to the answering machine and maybe pick it up after they started talking. "If it's important, they'll leave a message"
- abathur 6y ago
  It hasn't been that long, though. This is a bit of a tautology, but I guess it skews towards people who actually advertise/distribute their primary phone numbers (i.e., for business, or as a contact point for some club/group/community/org) or are otherwise in a field/business that basically boils down to networking. I'm not sure exactly when I stopped answering calls outside of my contacts, but I know it's in the past ~9 years (and I feel like I've only been very consistent about not answering for 2-3 years). I'm fairly phone-avoidant, and almost never receive a "real" call from a non-contact. But it wouldn't shock me if my last real-estate agent answered her personal cell if I called from a number she didn't recognize.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  I get calls from HP and Dell (we have on-premisis servers), which somehow come from numbers in Britain, Singapore, India and Denmark. I'd prefer them to email, but I can't really blame the support staff from trying to solve problems as fast as possible. For spam calls, I lost all pretence of politeness years ago. In the best case I just hang up. However, I only get a spam call every 3 months or so.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Last presidential election cycle, I seriously snapped when I was getting multiple calls a day, every day. I’d never answer them, but blocking the numbers never did any good. I somehow managed to get the name of one of the companies responsible for it. Then, I called them up — not the call center employees who were making the calls, the actual corporate office — and I told them to please stop calling me, or, real soon, I was gonna start looking for someone to sue. The calls stopped. I don’t think I even got any this cycle.
goodcanadian 6y ago
When I lived in the U.S., the do-not-call register worked pretty well. It wasn't perfect, but it dropped the unsolicited calls from several per day to a couple of times per month.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  Unfortunately, it's basically stopped working completely. Legit companies respect it, but there are a lot of overseas scammers continuing to call because there's very little that can be done to them. So now it's all robocalls and "windows technical support" and crap like that. I get 3-5 per day on both my cell phone and land line each.
corpMaverick 6y ago
This. I no longer answer calls if don't recognize the number. I was helping on a campaign with a phone bank and no one was answering.
AngryData 6y ago
Yeah I got 4-5 spam calls every day and just as many spam texts on my personal cell phone and so I don't answer any unknown calls on it. It is all just scam robocalls. If a pollster called me, I doubt I would answer. And even if I did, would I trust they were a real poll? Probably not.

losteric 6y ago

> Basically, if I ever got a call from a number not in my contact list, I would never answer. I know I'm not the only one like this, but I don't have any numbers to back it up. huh... I have literally never met a single person that answers cold calls on personal lines, this was already SOP when I was a kid. Seriously, who's picking up those calls?

throwaway894345 6y ago
This wasn't SOP for me when I was growing up. We never got spam calls. Only the occasional wrong number.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  +1 to this, although I can say that if I had caller ID, I probably wouldn’t have answered unknown numbers, even when I was growing up.
andybak 6y ago
> Seriously, who's picking up those calls? People who don't live in countries where the problem is this bad? I'm in the UK and I get about 1 unsolicited call a month. If I didn't pick up numbers I didn't recognize I would have missed my Doctor (this week), several new client leads and multiple friends and acquaintences that changed their number.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Also people older than ~60 who still have a landline at home, and grew up without caller-id. Answering unknown phone calls was normal, because you never knew who the caller was.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    You don’t have to be 60+ to have grown up without caller ID. I’m much younger than that, and we certainly didn’t have it for at least most of my childhood. However, I do not have a landline at home now, and have not in many years.
  - rjsw 6y ago
    In the UK, doctors don't provide caller-id, not even the number of a hospital switchboard.
- mason55 6y ago
  Wouldn’t all those people leave voicemails?
  - randomchars 6y ago
    In some countries, voicemail is not a thing.
  - andybak 6y ago
    I guess so but I loathe voicemail more than I loathe the occasional marketing call. It's easier to just answer given the overall chance of it being a waste of time.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Just let your voicemail fill up, if it bothers you that much. If you miss an important call, it will show up as a missed call on your phone.
    - bentcorner 6y ago
sneak 6y ago
I get 3-5 robocalls a month. The phone number on my website rings a phone on my desk. When it rings, I pick it up.
sgc 6y ago
Anyone with a job that requires them to talk to people with unknown numbers calling. There is one bias right there. Probably people who don't get that many cold calls outside elections, which must fit some sort of demographic as well. But the better pollsters don't just call. They use various online methods as well. 538 lists the following methods, and rates a pollster higher if they use more of them: Live — Live telephone interviews, including cellphones. Landline — Live telephone interviews, not including cellphones. Live* — Live telephone interviews, but FiveThirtyEight cannot confirm whether cellphones are included. IVR — Interactive voice response, otherwise known as automated polls or “robopolls.” Online — Poll conducted by internet; generally, this means by web browser, but it’s inclusive of text message or application-based polling of mobile phones. Mail — By U.S. mail or other “snail mail” service.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  >Anyone with a job that requires them to talk to people with unknown numbers calling. Exactly this. I'm forced to answer a lot of calls even when I think it's 80% likely that it's a spam call. I own a business and need to keep my employees fed with work. My likelihood of landing a contract with a person drops by about half if I don't pick up the phone right away.
lanius 6y ago
Couriers often call me when they're unable to get into my building to deliver packages. One time I was expecting a delivery, I answered a call from an unknown number figuring it was the courier. To my annoyance, it was a cold-calling recruiter.
parliament32 6y ago
Hell, this was SOP before we even had Caller ID! If you weren't expecting a call, you let it go to the answering machine and maybe pick it up after they started talking. "If it's important, they'll leave a message"
abathur 6y ago
It hasn't been that long, though. This is a bit of a tautology, but I guess it skews towards people who actually advertise/distribute their primary phone numbers (i.e., for business, or as a contact point for some club/group/community/org) or are otherwise in a field/business that basically boils down to networking. I'm not sure exactly when I stopped answering calls outside of my contacts, but I know it's in the past ~9 years (and I feel like I've only been very consistent about not answering for 2-3 years). I'm fairly phone-avoidant, and almost never receive a "real" call from a non-contact. But it wouldn't shock me if my last real-estate agent answered her personal cell if I called from a number she didn't recognize.
Symbiote 6y ago
I get calls from HP and Dell (we have on-premisis servers), which somehow come from numbers in Britain, Singapore, India and Denmark. I'd prefer them to email, but I can't really blame the support staff from trying to solve problems as fast as possible. For spam calls, I lost all pretence of politeness years ago. In the best case I just hang up. However, I only get a spam call every 3 months or so.
pmiller2 6y ago
Last presidential election cycle, I seriously snapped when I was getting multiple calls a day, every day. I’d never answer them, but blocking the numbers never did any good. I somehow managed to get the name of one of the companies responsible for it. Then, I called them up — not the call center employees who were making the calls, the actual corporate office — and I told them to please stop calling me, or, real soon, I was gonna start looking for someone to sue. The calls stopped. I don’t think I even got any this cycle.

goodcanadian 6y ago

When I lived in the U.S., the do-not-call register worked pretty well. It wasn't perfect, but it dropped the unsolicited calls from several per day to a couple of times per month.

thewebcount 6y ago
Unfortunately, it's basically stopped working completely. Legit companies respect it, but there are a lot of overseas scammers continuing to call because there's very little that can be done to them. So now it's all robocalls and "windows technical support" and crap like that. I get 3-5 per day on both my cell phone and land line each.

corpMaverick 6y ago

This. I no longer answer calls if don't recognize the number. I was helping on a campaign with a phone bank and no one was answering.

AngryData 6y ago

Yeah I got 4-5 spam calls every day and just as many spam texts on my personal cell phone and so I don't answer any unknown calls on it. It is all just scam robocalls. If a pollster called me, I doubt I would answer. And even if I did, would I trust they were a real poll? Probably not.