Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with telephone

Yes my refrigerator is running, and you need to get a lawyer

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:11:18 -0800

Legal status of inadvertently sent (supposed to be internal) automated test calls which could be viewed as "prank calls" that go accidentally to 7-13 unsuspecting recipients. And more. YANML i know, please read details. SHORT GROSSLY SIMPLIFIED QUESTION:
I know YANML:

Legally, if you are the cause of ~10 people getting something they characterize a prank call which includes their name, and the ANI was masked so that a random 3rd party is blamed, what jeopardy are you in? The 3rd party knows who you are. The Masking was not intentional, just an unfortunate system setting.

What type of lawyer should you consult?

(looking at context below) is consulting a lawyer at this point wise?

Is the justification that it was an honest mistake that was made while tired and doing an assigned, routine task as part of your job acceptable? Even if there were some lack of protocol that were still ultimately your fault and exacerbated the situation?

As a decent person and morally what is the right course of action (please view context below)

What is the worst case scenario here?

Throw away email = telephony.lawyer@gmail.com

LONG RAMBLING CONTEXT (and blanket apology):

I work for a company that does massive calls for institutions, usually as emergency notifications and "reverse 911" type things. WE DO NOT DO SOLICITATIONS, POLITICAL CALLS, or any of the other stuff that gives broadcast telephony a bad name.

I was preparing to do scheduled, routine testing at 3:00am two nights ago (so we didn't affect users). It was all supposed to be internal tests and I was intending to send test messages to my own cell phone. Easy, no problems.

I was working from home, it was late, I was tired and this is something I do a million times a day as the course of my work. at 10:00pm, before the tests the following morning (and before I tried to catch at least a few hours sleep) I needed to make sure some software that I had just installed on my personal computer was going to work for the 3am tests. I was sending a message essentially in command prompt, back-end method which sends out immediately after you select a list. I thought I had selected a list with only my own personal cell phone and information in it. Somehow I selected the wrong list, it was a list from a customer with live data in it. It was a list I had been working on scripting a solution on earlier that day... somehow I sent it to myself with an ambiguous name thinking it was MY cell phone and test data.

I realized the mistake after the system validation message said "sending to 30 contacts" when I was just supposed to send to one (me)! I immediately tried to terminate the message, but it was too late and around 7-13 people got called.

So here is where it gets sticky. This test call I sent out can insert computer spoken portions, usually the name of someone to whom it is addressed. The accidental list (and my test list of course) both had recipient's names (I work with this type of list a lot as part of my day job... testing is just something I get stuck with at times).

So an unfortunate 2 second oversight and failure to double check which numbers I am sending to gets worse because people are now not just getting a random call, but a random call that features their name in it.

Where it gets more sticky is that the message I sent did not indicate it was a test. Like i said, it was late, I was in a hurry, I was just sending to my self so I wrote some thing for the CPU to say along the lines of free association gibberish that I just typed out on the spot. "message foo bar, go to the playground pick up your baby [name] from play time at [date] thanks bye". or something like that.

Bad form, bad protocol, totally my fault, no excuses. But that is what happened.

Now, the final part, the part that has me worried:
OK, so on the test platforms we use you can define what the outgoing caller ID is (ANI). Usually we just use company numbers, or personal number, or gibberish numbers. In this case it was my test platform but the caller ID number had been initialized in the account by someone else, so I never looked into what the number was. It was a local number so I thought it was one of the companies #s, or some random disconnected number, or ... I don't know, never thought about it.

Again, my responsibility, my fault, my bad. I should have thought about it.

But, when the call went out, I tried to stop it, which I prevented most of the calls, but some still went through. I informed who I needed to inform in the company, fretted over it for 20 minutes but realized there was very little else I could do, and went to sleep so I could do the tests at 3am.

So, when this call goes out to these people, who are understandably confused, a little shocked that it has their name, and some apparently angry, they called the caller ID number back.

It WAS a random number, but apparently, to a real person.

I found this out yesterday when this person called my cell phone and interrogated me about it. I'm not quite sure how he tracked me down (I have thoughts but they are irrelevant).

After at first I honestly did not know who he was. He explained what had happened to him (7 random people from another state called wondering why he was prank calling them) I connected the dots. I apologized, tried to explain in general terms that it was an honest mistake and generally everything I outlined above. I was a bit shocked so I may have admitted more than I should have, and this guy knew who I was through use of Facebook, so I am a bit unnerved

That said, he seems to be OK. By the end of the convo he was not mad at me and we actually chatted in a friendly manner about what he does and a mutual interest, but I don't know. Maybe he is just trying to psych me out or... I don't know. I have not really heard back from him. I called him back (at his request) to follow up, but only got a Voice Mail.

Anyway... This brings me to my question. obviously YANML, but what is the legal status of this? Should I consult a lawyer. And I am willing to admit maybe I should, but what type of lawyer would know something about this type of thing?

And on a decent person, moral level what should I do? Keep in mind, the people who were contacted are off limits. My company has expressly forbid me from contacting them (their customers). So basically what can I do to make it up to random guy?

I am not at all concerned about the company, I have informed the proper people above me, they are handling it to protect their interests. I need to protect my interests. I am 90% sure this will just blow over and maybe I'll buy this guy a beer and be done with it, but I want to prepare for that 10%.

Thanks Metafilter.

Good Phone for the Could You Speak Up A Little Crowd

DU — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:22:46 -0800

Loud, clear, land-line phone without feedback whine? I don't know if we are hard of hearing, or getting old or what, but I and especially my wife have a hard time hearing what people say on our landline phone. We turned up the volume to the loudest it goes and it's still not loud enough. This is a corded phone, btw.

Worse, the sound from the mic is feed to the speaker (I guess because otherwise you can't hear what you are saying? huh?). With the volume set high, this causes terrible feedback whine.

We tried a second phone and had the same problem. Are there phones out there that don't feed the mic to the speaker? Or that otherwise filter the whine out? Or simply a clearer, louder phone without me having to know how they made that happen?

We'd rather not spend $300 on a Special Phone but I do realize that we'll probably have to spend more than the $15 cheapest-they-had model.

Creative Ideas to get my money's worth post facto-

priested — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:08:07 -0800

I might have to pay money for a service I basically never used. Any creative ideas on how to get my money's worth post situation? I requested new home phone and Internet service from Verizon approximately 7/30/09, after which I was told a phone number was issued to two homes simultaneously.

My phone service did not get connected until 8/4/09 and my Internet service was never connected. By 8/7/09, I requested the entire plan be discontinued as a result of Verizon’s unprofessional handling of the situation (spent about 7 hours on hold or speaking with supervisors that couldn't do anything but give me the run-around, and not even politely at that).

Upon original receipt of requested payment, I contacted Verizon’s credit department and was told I would be issued a credit for the amount owed, essentially nullifying the amount owed.

I requested this in writing but did not receive this. Now I got a letter from a collections agency (which I've in-turn disputed after getting no where on the second round of calls).

I am being asked to pay for a service I did not use for anything outside of contacting Verizon to fix the problems they created (can they charge me a whole month's worth for 3 to 4 days use?).

Additionally, they are saying I had the service longer than I did (4 days of it the phone didn't work, although their system says it did because the number was duplicated and worked elsewhere).

Here's the real question... Assuming I do have to pay the amount (it's under 100 bucks, but it is the principal!), any suggestions on how I can get my money's worth out of them? I've considered printing up thousands of flyers and posting them around town, etc...

The more creative, the better.

Answering Machine with white list to permit only certain callers

royalchinook — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:39:36 -0800

I would like to find a hardware answering machine that has some advanced controls to manage which incoming numbers can make the phone ring. I have an annoyances that I'd like to cut out - telemarketers calling (I went on Canada's DNC list but that made it worse because now all the spam calls are from the States); the solution I thought of would be to have all numbers that I haven't approved to go straight to voicemail without ringing the phone at all. Other callers in a "white list" would ring the phone like usual. My current answering machine does actually have a "black list" feature but the spam calls are always from a new number so it doesn't really make sense.

The other annoyance I had that I was able to solve is to have certain hours where no one can ring the phone. I solved this with the Night Mode feature on my Panasonic phone which is awesome.

Some restrictions I have is that I'd like this to be a hardware solution instead of software because I don't want my computer running all night just to be an answering machine, I'd also like to stay away from VoIP because I've tried that previously with Vonage and found the quality and reliability to be unacceptable.

Mobile phone with dual SIM, wifi and SIP protocol support

fifigyuri — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:00:24 -0800

Do you know mobile producers which provide dual SIM mobiles with wifi supporting SIP protocol? I pendle between two countries, so decreasing my communication bills with a piece of convenience is welcome. Under convenience I mean having one instrument for talking, instead of several ones or one, where I change SIM cards. My vision is to have a mobile which can have two SIM cards, has the ability to access network through wifi.. so when I get home it can automatically identify that it sees a familiar network, it connects and puts me to VOIP provider through SIP. No need to change cards, and at home it is possible to call for less.

The mobile operators does not have the interest to provide offers for such machines, but I found some quite interesting producers: http://dual-com.sk/, http://www.dualsimmobileshop.co.uk/wifi-dual-sim-phones-c-25.html?zenid=hjrd6nfucmd61rl484f6kv3cv3 .

It seems there similar things out there. Do you have hints for other ones? Can you recommend good ones? Other things like the camera, 3G support, OS are also interesting, would be good to have wider spectrum to choose from. But the most important is to have 2 SIM support with wifi and have to know SIP protocol..

Conference room telephone setup

emmysue01 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:46:54 -0800

I need some help setting up a telephone system for a large conference room (about 50 people) for question and answers. I'm looking for something that would allow the 50 or so participates to ask and have questions answered by someone off site. I'm not sure if I will have access to a land line, so systems that work with either land lines or cell phones would be helpful. I would prefer a system that has little cost as I'm not sure how often it will be used.

Thanks

silent telephone needed

spyke23 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:25:48 -0800

New baby in the house, easily awoken by telephone ringing, so I am after a phone that can be muted, with visual ring indicator, and preferably a multi hand set dect type if possible. I am in the UK.

Fitting 2 phones on 1 line.

Obscure Reference — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:19:07 -0800

My (land line) phone splitter stopped working and I don't know why. I was out of town for a few days and when I returned, there was no dial tone on the line. I removed the splitter so that I could report it broken without any intermediate devices being blamed for the problem. They (Verizon) fixed it at their end but now it only works without the splitter, or with only 1 line plugged into the splitter. Is it possible that they reduced the signal strength so it can no longer support an extension? If that is the case, do there exist signal amplifiers that will solve the problem?

Is Ooma a good phone service?

hippybear — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:01:38 -0800

Asking for a not-so-tech-savvy friend... Is Ooma VOIP a decent service? Does anyone have any personal accounts to share? She's not that computer clueful, and is trying to find a way to get broadband internet access without driving herself broke. It looks as though FiOS is available where she lives, and she's considering ditching her landline (she currently uses dial-up) for FiOS with Ooma. Does anyone have anything to share which I can relay to her which will either encourage her to make the leap or scare her off into a different direction? Bonus points for detailed personal anecdotes about using this service. (She's a big fan of related experiences.)

There is a storm outside! Can I shower?

boulder20something — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:55:45 -0800

Am I safe showering during a thunder and lightening storm? My mom always scared me growing up, telling us no showers during a thunderstorm. She also kept us off the land lines. Did she really think we could get electrocuted in our bathtub or by talking on the phone? Needless to say, the neurosis has stuck with me now that I am an adult and I want to make sure my mom was just crazy.

Seeking broadband + phone + mobile consolidation options (UK).

BrokenEnglish — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:41:05 -0800

I'm spending about UKP65 on phone, cell/mobile phone and broadband Internet each month. How can I consolidate all these options into something cheaper but just as reliable? I'm in the UK and about to move house. My current Internet provider is Zen, who are great but a bit pricey at UKP35 per month. I have a mobile phone which costs UKP14, and about 14 months of the contract still to run on that. I also use BT for voice calls, although I hardly use this and keep wondering if there's a decent broadband-only package I could use. Is it even possible to have broadband without paying the BT tax?

So: I have to keep the mobile for now, need a reliable broadband provider with no frills (preferably generous download limits), and would like an alternative to a BT line. Interested in options and your own experiences rather than links to broadband comparison sites. Thanks!

Phone numbers to oblivion

DetonatedManiac — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:10:16 -0800

PhoneFilter: For testing purposes I need phone numbers in the following categories: No Answer (just rings), Disconnected, Busy. I need about a dozen each Discon, Busy, No Answer (no answering machine, at least 10 rings). Any area code in the USA.

Preferably phone company test lines that are always guaranteed to be in return this signal, but if you just happen to know some lines that fit one of these categories throw them up here. NONE should actually go to real people. Thanks.

FYI - I am doing internal test for our company's emergency mass notification system... you are helping make sure school children get emergency messages from their schools, not any type of shady phone solicitation deal.

Is the ticking on my new cordless phone a result of interference from my old wireless router?

IndigoRain — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:11:47 -0800

Is the ticking on my new cordless phone a result of interference from my old wireless router? I have an old (I'd guess about 5 years) D-Link DI-514 router that says it's on 2.4 GHz. I have a set of Panasonic model KX-TGA246W cordless phones that are also on 2.4 GHz and work fine.

However, I just bought a bottom-of-the-line ($9 at Wal-Mart) Uniden phone that claims 2.4GHz. On this new phone, on some calls (but not all) I hear a constant ticking in the background... like a clock but a little faster. I've tried changing the phone's channel to no avail. It still happens on some calls. The Uniden phone is at the other end of the house from the router. One of the Panasonic phones is literally 2 feet from the router and works fine with no ticking.

Is the wireless router frequency likely the culprit for the ticking noise? If so, do I buy a new phone or a new router? I can't find many 900MHz phones anymore in stores, should I go for a 5.8GHz one if it's not too expensive? What frequency are most new wireless routers today?

Asking people to call a phone number?

1001 questions — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:15:40 -0800

Are there any legal issues involved in asking people to call a telephone number? The scenario: Let's say the New York Times had a section (not an ad) that simply said Call This Number and listed a phone number that happened to be a comic book store or some other "random" company. The company had no knowledge that the number was going to being printed.

Would it be considered harassment for the NYT to tell people to call that phone number? Would they be responsible if a million people called the number and effectively made the line useless to the company being called?

Smaller scale: Let's say a person posted up flyers in their neighborhood that simply had a phone number on it. Same issues?

(above assumes everything is taking place within the U.S.)

bee Bee BEEP - Im sorry, this call has been disconnected

DetonatedManiac — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:09:46 -0800

PhoneNetworkFilter: Help me find government reports (or any official-ish industry reports) that give statistics for the failure rates of various phone systems under various conditions in the USA. So, for my job, I need to find reports that state authoritatively why phone calls could be dropped, not go through, appear to be disconnected when they're not, ring but not actually connect, etc.

Looking especially for official facts and figures, particularly interested in cold hard statistics, along the lines of "Studies have shown that 98% of calls in the US go through successfully on the first try on any given day under normal circumstances, but [weather, temperature, construction, the way the wind blows] can bring that down to 92%."

Looking for info on POT (plain old telephone) lines as well as Cell, VOIP, and others. US information only.

Thanks in advance, and also know that this will ensure that you get alerted more efficiently when your kids school is closed due to weather.

Cordless phone mysteriously rings

Joleta — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:01:47 -0800

Why is one of our cordless phones ringing when no call is coming in? We just got home last night from a week's vacation, and today one of our cordless phones has rung when no call is coming in. It didn't do this before we left (although it may have been doing it while we were gone). This happened three times today, with the phone ringing about four times each occurrence. When we answer the phone, there is nothing. This phone is a GE 5.8 GHz. We have two other cordless phones, both Panasonic 2.4 GHz, which are not ringing at these odd times (nor, obviously, are our two corded phones). We did get one legitimate incoming call today, for which all the phones rang normally. We get a normal dial tone on the misbehaving phone. This phone is in the same room as our AirPort wireless router, but nothing has changed there and we have never had a problem before. Any ideas what's going on?

New Comcast phone service, but old jacks no longer work

blueberry — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:44:20 -0800

My mom switched to land-line phone service through Comcast, but now she only has one working phone jack. How do we restore functionality to the remaining outlets in the house? [This question is a bit long, but if you want to skim it, I think you can get by just reading the non-small text]

My mom recently switched to Comcast for cable/internet/phone. Cable and internet are fine, but it's the phone portion that's causing trouble.

Her house has a phone jack in each room. Back when she had "normal" phone service, the phones worked in every room. Since she changed to Comcast now there's only one phone outlet in the house that works.

Looking at the Comcast black box (that the cable from outside plugs into), there's a short phone cord (photo of the back of the Comcast box with phone cord circled here) that runs from the box to a little Comcast-installed connector-box on the wall. Looking at the little connector-box, I could see that from there, a wire seems to run down through a hole in the floor to the basement.

I'm guessing that during installation, the Comcast guy drilled this hole, went down to the basement and ran some phone cord from there over to just one phone jack (which is why it is just that one phone jack in the dining room that now works).

The problem is, we want her to go back to having phone access in every room (or at least back to having a phone in her bedroom and one on the second floor) so that she can hear it.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, we could just get her a cordless phone with 3 handsets and a charger for each room. However, my mom's hearing is not what it once was, so we want to get her a couple of phones with a blinking light, or something where you can plug in a lamp so that the lamp flashes when she gets a call. For this it seems like we'll need a phone jack in the same room where we want the flashing lights.

She has a cordless phone with a flashing base, but of course the flashing base is tethered to the one working phone jack in the dining room, so she never sees it. This leads to a lot of missed calls for her. Anyway, long story-short...

How do we restore functionality to the old phone jacks? I assume that the working phone cord would need to be "split" some way and then new wire fed to the old outlets... ?

Is this something a phone guy can do? Can Comcast do this? (I'll give Comcast a call when I have some time to sit on hold, but they're closed now and I thought maybe some fellow MeF's had run into a similar problem and might have some good advice.)

Thanks in advance

How much of the telephone and Internet systems would survive a nuke?

wastelands — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 07:40:53 -0800

Would the landline telephone system be completely down after a nuclear strike on ~20 U.S. cities? I'm an avid post-apocalypse buff, and I've been watching Jericho on Netflix's Watch Instantly lately. I love the show. But a few points of realism bug me, specifically, the lack of communication by radio / phone / Internet in the show.

Would the landline telephone network actually be down as portrayed in the show? I could be wrong, but wouldn't regional parts of it still survive? Or is the assumption that the bombs would have screwed up trunks/backbones and major switching centers? Or maybe general lack of electricity would kill it?

In the same vein, how much of Internet access would survive in the "Nukes hitting 20 major cities" scenario? It's supposed to be distributed, but again, maybe the idea is that big trunks were severed?

The sense of isolation and lack of communication and news in the show makes it more ominous and mysterious, but I somehow doubt it's realistic. I mean, if nothing else, there'd be Ham radio operators relaying news, right?

Upright non-voip telepone hunt

devnull — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:40:28 -0800

Where can I buy an upright non-voip telephone? I'm looking to buy a desk telephone for the office. Previously I've used upright Cisco VOIP phones like the 7961G.

Because this new phone will not be within a secured network, I can't use VOIP this time (insecure initial key exchange) so am looking for a traditional POTS phone.

Apart from being upright, the phone needs to have a decent keypad so that I can dial quickly, and heavy enough that it doesn't move across the desk when I dial.

I can't find anything on Amazon or in electrical dealers. Any ideas?

Help, I've fallen, and I can't get up...

juliewhite — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:58:05 -0800

I need recommendations for a good "emergency autodialer" system for my grandmother. The general idea is that should she fall and break her hip (or whatever), she can hit a button on a pendant, and the system calls some preprogrammed numbers and delivers an emergency message. CTQs below... What I am looking for is something that calls a couple of preprogrammed numbers FIRST before calling 911. AND that respond intelligently to voicemail - i.e., if it calls my cell and gets voicemail, it should continue down the list. The reviews I have read suggest that some systems do not have this feature. Some sort of feedback to the device "Press the pound key if you acknowledge this message" would be perfect, if that stopped the calling cycle.

Also, ideally in a "pendant" form (rather than a watch), and waterproof. Any suggestions?

Bell bug?

Chuckles McLaughy du Haha, the depressed clown — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:53:55 -0800

I've unplugged all my home phones. What should I hear if I call the number, and my service is working properly?

Forwarding U.K. calls to U.S.

computech_apolloniajames — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:16:43 -0800

Can I set up a U.K. land line to forward incoming calls to a U.S.-based number? I work for a company in New York, and we'd like to field calls from the U.K. here.

Are there any other alternate methods of having a U.K.-based number ring on my U.S. phone?

What would be the costs (and any other factors, such as hassle) involved with this?

Who is the voice of the Operator?

miffed — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:20:32 -0800

Who recorded the canonical telephone operator messages? She was responsible for classic hits like, "We're sorry, your call did not go through," and "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again." I vaguely remember seeing her as a guest on a late night talk show when I was a kid. Letterman is most likely, but maybe even Johnny Carson? I'd love to find video of it.

Get Me The Skype Out Of Here!

Spurious — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:01:42 -0800

What can I do with $50 worth of Skype Credits? (other than make calls) About two years ago I purchased $60 in Skype credits so I could talk to my wife overseas. However, we found cheaper/better ways to communication and did not use all the Skype Credits.

Today I have around $50 in Skype Credits sitting in my account. Skype credits void if left unused for 180 days, so every month or so I have to make a quick long distance telephone call (usually to the KLM ticketing booth in Geneva airport, simply because I already have the number) in order to reset the 180 day counter.

I want to get rid of these credits once and for all. Other than making long distance telephone calls, what else can I do with $50 in Skype Credits? Can I buy something material (headphones etc...)? Can I just ask for a check?

Thanks!

Trace a call that can't be traced?

hammerthyme — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:00:58 -0800

What can I possible do about someone that is repeatedly calling my place of employment and hanging up? I'm sitting here at my place of employment, a federally run "health clinic," and within the past hour have received 6 phone calls, all of which hung up after 2 seconds. This has been happening off and on for the past month.

The call goes like this:
- Phone rings
- We pick up and say, "Thank you for calling blah blah, this is blah blah, how can I help you?"
- 2 seconds goes by with a TV audible in the background, and then the caller hangs up

We've noticed that if a female picks up the phone, the caller doesn't hang up right away.

According to the telecommunications chief, who works in a different building but is responsible for our telephone system, there is nothing that can be done. Additionally, we're on a multi-line system so caller id isn't possible. Phone junkies, are you out there? Is this a shot in the dark or can I do something?