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Ringback Tones and Avoiding Phone Spam

Recently, I have added a ringback tone to my cell phone service, and people who have called me have either gotten a kick out of listening to the sounds of Earth, Wind, & Fire while calling me, or have been utterly confused why music is playing when they are calling me.

For those who do not know, a ringback tone is basically a sound that you install to replace the ringing sound you hear when calling someone. In my case, I chose Earth, Wind, and Fire's, "Let's Groove". So when people call me up, they hear an MP3 clip of that song playing instead of the normal ringing tone. Some people who have called me were confused, so they had just hung up, but I have found a new use for them... at least for the time being.

Telemarketers usually don't direct dial their targets, but have a computer dial for them, and when they get a phone that is ringing, they will transfer that call to the next available agent. If it is a busy signal or anything else, it will hang up automatically. So by having a ringback tone installed, it has been interesting for me. Every once in a while, I'll get called, but my phone will ring for less than 1 second, and then hang up. A few times, the Caller ID picked up the number, and I dialed back to see what it was. Everytime I have called back, I get dropped into the IVR menu of some telemarketing group. Lately, it has been for this one scam where they say they will give you a free trip to Vegas or wherever if you come to a 90 minute presentation for some housing complex or something. I've told them a million times that I'm not interested and they tell me that they won't bother me again, but somehow I end up being in their system again. At least now I have found a way to get them off my back... until the computers are smart enough to distinguish between an error message and a ringback tone....