What would you do if you kept getting many calls from foreign phone scammers?

Maybe the phone service will have answer, such as blocking any numbers that come from specific country codes.

Why not use a cheap answering machine? turn off the ringer, she can still hear the messages.

Seriously, the whole children in school argument always makes me roll my eyes. A two minute delay in getting those calls won’t make a difference. In a medical emergency, the school should have already made actual medical contact – the parent contact is a courtesy – the parent can’t do anything.

In real life, that person would probably get a ‘don’t tell me’ message from me. Sounds whiny.

@BellaB I don’t mean to argue but I think you’re a little off-base here. If you do have children, you do need a reliable way to be contacted. The OP states that her friend has poor cell service where she lives and so needs to keep a landline. What is there to eye roll about that?

Keeping the landline is fine. Turn off the ringer. Let the machine pick up. Check for messages occasionally or set it so you can hear them.

Taking the call from the school, or picking up a message, won’t make a difference. If she was at work (in a lot of industrial or medical settings, for example), she would only be able to check for messages a couple of times a day. The school contact with parents is not a matter of life or death. The parent isn’t being called to come in and do surgery.

What happened in the past? no personal calls at work. no mobiles. Parents were out of the house with no contact with the school for entire days. There wasn’t a huge number of student deaths resulting from lack of parental contact during school hours.

That is where the eye roll comes from.

Try nomorobo. It’s free and easy to set up. Works for me.

My daughter broke her arm at school the second day of 1st grade. Every minute counted that day. My phone is always by my side now when she isn’t with me.

Um, @BellaB, do you have school age children? It really can matter to some people in some areas. Your suggestions about turning off ringers and listening for messages was a good call. Your eye-roll was not.

Just do what I always do…don’t answer the phone. Caller ID rocks!

Can’t you get some sort of message bank on your landline? We can here. Then as others have said, just let the phone take the call and set it so you can hear the messages. My experience is most telemarkers etc. don’t leave messages. So you’ll get lots of hang-ups.

Also, if the school was waiting to speak to a parent before taking action when a child is sick or injured, I’d be very concerned. Certainly they should contact the parent, but it shouldn’t be an urgent situation. If you were out shopping or at work or at the doctors, you wouldn’t be there to answer your phone, are they really going to wait to hear from you before taking any action to look after the child? I really don’t think that’s likely.

I second Robocall blocker called Nomorobo. Some days 80% of the calls I get are single ringers; they are blocked at the end of the first ring with Nomorobo, Most robocalls can be blocked and the phony IRS or “Hi this is Rachel from card services . . ..” are Robo calls.

I tried to set it up for my FIOS Verizon landline and it said it was not available for traditional copper wire landlines.

FIOS is not “Copper”,

Contact Verizon customer service direct.

Someone on the FB thread suggested Nomorobo and this person stated that it won’t work because these are not legit telemarketers, they’re scammers.

My last suggestion to this person was I guess she’s going to have to live with the calls. It seemed like any suggestions she was not able to abide by or were not suitable to her needs.

I would try Nomorobo anyway. It might knock some of the calls out. If the person has a reason for every suggestion to not try the solution, then I’d dismiss her/his concerns as just wanting to bitch and not fix it.

@Tropical_Willie Yeah – I know that but that’s what the Nomorob site said when I chose that as my provider.

I would change the number. This person states it would be too much of a hassle but it really isn’t. At least not as much of a hassle as putting up with these calls.

It does seem this person slightly enjoys bitching at the scammers.

Caller ID. I don’t answer calls if it’s a number I don’t recognize. If it’s something legit they can leave a message and I’ll call back. Scammers and telemarketers usually don’t leave messages.

Contact Verizon CUSTOMER SERVICE they have ways to block.

If no suggestions suit her needs, perhaps she just likes bitching about unwanted calls. Some people love drama.