Have you tried the Do Not Call List? If you ask them to put you on their list, they are not supposed to call you for a year. I do that with any solicitations I don't want and it works really well for me. Is a survey different? What's currently bugging me is phone calls from a recorded voice selling something. Since there's no one there, you can't ask to be put on the list.

Surveys and political phone calls are allowed. We are on the "do not call list" but we cannot stop them. It is the same company day after day after day. We do ask the health people (cancer and heart) to stop calling, and they must for a year, but these survey calls won't stop.

The only thing we can think of to do is to answer the survey questions - give them horrible answers, but then those who paid for the survey may call us. Also I think that bank or credit cards are sponsoring the surveys, and I don't want them to take the information and mess with our credit.

I absolutely hate it that political calls are allowed. It frosts me that politicians can exempt themselves from things they impose on the rest of us.
I actually enjoy doing surveys, unless they are really personal, but if you don't, and hanging up right away hasn't worked, perhaps a series of really off-the-wall answers would do the trick. What if you pretended to not be all there?

I have a phone that has the Caller ID in the handset and also "talks". If it says "out of area" or "unknown" I don't answer. I also have an "old school" answering machine, so if I can't hear or see the Caller ID, I'll wait to see if anyone starts to leave a message, and if it is important, I'll pick up. Otherwise, I don't. Some don't even send the phone number, so there is nothing to block.

I believe that you have to use specific language, "Put me on your company's do not call list". And get the name of the company doing the calling and write a letter to the AG's office and your state representatives.

Sorry I don't have better answers.

I get almost no unwanted phone calls anymore. I disconnected the landline and only use cell phones. No one can call a cell phone unsolicited because some cell phone companies charge for incoming calls. It works very well.

THanks for the suggestions. I have tried to think of mean things to do to discourage them, and then I realize that my efforts are always those that are tried and will not work. I went online and tried to google the name of the company - "Communications". It looks like they are being supported by credit card companies. If I do something crazy or act crazy, then they may get back at me somehow.

I think the appropriate thing is to write a letter, but if I had time to do that, I suppose I wouldn't resent the time it takes to answer the phone.

Unfortunately I have too many family members that I want to talk to who live far away. I just hate to let the phone ring, and not answer it.

Thanks for the responses.

Sammy

Athena, we posted at exactly the same time.
Do cell phone companies charge you for cell phone calls you receive, or do they charge the sender? We had some bad calls that came to us from a computer that we had the cell phone company remove, but I don't know how they can charge the sender.

Sammy

If your phone contract charges you for both incoming and outgoing calls, then you will be charged for the calls received. The caller is also charged for the calls they make through their phone company. Most cell phone contracts include free incoming calls though.

As long as the company calling you has a real human speaking to you and not a robot, then you should be able to ask to be put on their do not call list. Each company keeps their own internal list of people who request not to be called. This has nothing to do with the national list, so if they say something about how they are exempt from that tell them you know that, but you want to be put on their own list. That has worked for me in the past. But really, if you're using a cell phone then no one should be able to call you.

We had a similar problem and after telling them to quit calling twice (only because they would call every hour after 1pm and it is logged on our caller id) I basically went to the Do not call report list and wrote them up. The calls quit coming within a week of writing them up. I basically stated that we had requested they quit calling us. It's worth a shot. Otherwise we just let it ring.

You need to say "Put me on your do not call list." That has worked for me.

What is going on is that the worker justs marks the phone number as "answering machine" instead of "refused to take survey" and the number goes back into the auto-dialers queue, so you get called again and again and...OR the company has an either/or marker, took survey, didn't. The poor workers probably get no pay for "refused to take survey" so they deliberately mis-mark the number. Or the company policy is to keep calling, hoping to get someone to answer that will take the "survey", or to wear you down with the calls until you will.

I feel sorry for the people stuck working in those places. A few days ago I got the same thing and when I said "put me on your do not call list.", the voice said ok I will but almost sounded like they were going to cry--what a terrible job. But they haven't called back, either.