11mo ago

What percentage of phone calls (to your personal phone) do you answer?

I'd say I'm hovering around the 60% mark.

I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognise, unless it identifies someone I'm expecting a call from with the "maybe" thing. I don't use my phone for work (often). I don't call people to catch up, I'd rather IM. My mother or my best friend call and I ignore them more often than I probably should.

But really I just don't like talking on the phone that much.

47 comments

Close to 100% for known contacts.
Very close to 0% for unknown numbers.
Personal: 0% unless it is a call with a planned time.
Work: 0% unless it is an in-house number of my organization. Communication can occur via email, please and thank you.
Basically all of them.
A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:
Doctor
Dentist
Sister
Wife
Close friend
I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.
I have no reason not to speak to any of these.
- Must be nice not getting like 2-8 spam calls daily (no, that is not an exaggeration)
  
  I've had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.
  I probably get one a month or so on my work number.
  
  I've found if you accidentally take a spam call it can be fun to string them along and waste their time for a good 30m if you've got time to kill, the humour is great but it also gets you blacklisted for a while and they stop calling
This is part of why I straight up do not trust most “reliable polls”, because tons of them are still conducted via phone, and in the era of constant spam and caller ID, most people younger than boomers just don’t answer unknown numbers, and also don’t even have, and in fact have never paid for, a landline. Not to mention, I still have a west coast area code, and I live on the east coast, and most of my friends have area codes from wherever they grew up, not where they live now, so targeting by area code is often nonsense.
I answer calls from saved numbers and my local hospital and that's about it. Otherwise you can leave a message and I'll decide on getting back to you
Family/close friends/doctors: 95% (I only don’t if I’m in the toilet, at the doctor, or etc).
Unknown/unsolicited: 0%. If it’s important, leave a message or fuck right off.
Nearly 98% of my calls come from that last group, though, so basically never.
My phone has been on silent permanently for the last 2 decades, so I miss 90% of calls. Only answer when it's a known contact and I'm actively looking at my phone.
I pick up every call I'm aware of. Scammers, phishers, polls, and everything else. I love messing with people, and good luck with getting accurate poll results, I have a dice rolling app I use to answer the questions.
It's even on a schedule for me now. The 'TV company' scam calls around 5pm to try me out, polling places seem to be weekend exclusives, and rarely I'll get a noonish jingle from some other random organization.
About 40% of the scam calls automatically disconnect after 8 seconds, and the rest I get to play with.
- Careful some calls might just be to collect your voice data for cloning. They'd call, record, and use your voice for malicious purposes like asking your relatives for money
  
  I don't think my early 20's radio host voice will be of much use to them.
- Have you tried explaining in your native language that you don't speak that language? They love it.
  
  Not yet, but I can do that later.
0%.
If I don't recognize your number I'm not answering the phone. Unless, I specifically am waiting for a call, like from an archaic doctor's office, or to get a verification of something. That is the only circumstance I will answer a unknown number from.
Even then, I use a voice answering service, that asks the person to identify themselves, and then I am told who is calling. So if that's not filled in I still don't answer.
Then, if they get to voicemail, and they don't leave a voicemail message, they're obviously spam... And I'm vindicated by not answering the phone
90% - If I recognize your phone number, I will answer the call if I'm not in a meeting. If you call multiple times in a row, I will leave the meeting to answer your call. But it better be an emergency or we're going to have some feedback to go over...
Also, the people who call multiple times instead of texting and then calling, really really really really really need to stop doing that. If it's an emergency call, text, call again. Because of the call I'm going to pay attention to what the text message says. So I can see oh it's a f****** emergency. If you're the kind of person who leaves a voicemail message, or text message, that just says call me back as soon as you can. F*** you. Learn how to communicate
- I got my current number around 3 years go, and the vast majority - easily 95% - of calls I get are still real estate, political, or job search spam for the previous owner. It's on permanent DND, but I'll check the text log every day or two.
3%. Mom, dad, and girlfriend. Anyone else nah.
100% during work, 50% offwork depend on who they are. Tbh i wish i could not answer any phone call except friends and families.
100%. I don't get any marketing or robocalls so it's either family, someone from work, or someone from an appointment or delivery I have. At this point, I much rather speak with someone on the phone than sit around and text back and forth.
5%.
Maybe around half of them. I don't answer calls if they're from numbers that aren't familiar to me, as they could very well be robocalls/scammers.
I have an app that blocks scam/spam so irl I answer 100% but technically I only pickup 50%
- I've run the gamut with these apps and none seem to really work I've even tried a few paid ones. These days, if you're not in my contact list or you don't provide caller ID, I don't answer.
Overall maybe only like 5–10%. Known numbers always, unknown numbers get iffy when I might be expecting a call from somewhere but don’t have their number saved.
All of them, but I'm also unemployed and looking for work. I can't let me not answering my phone to be the reason I get passed over for a job. More often than not it's a spam call but I can't afford to let an opportunity for an interview go. It sucks, before this I would barely answer the phone for known contacts. If it can be said on the phone it can be said in text, in far fewer words too.
Pretty much never. Direct family only really.
Talking is for IRL, or actually urgent things. Everything else is a message or email.
Don't ring me to discuss an email.
30%, my new mexico number gets a lot of spammers which just don't get blocked.
Edit: I pretty much only pick up calls that I know or from a different state.
Almost all of the ones i dont miss
I also miss most of them so its not a high rate
Close to 100%, I only don't call back the numbers my phone automatically labels as spam/fraud.
0.1%
I wish I could charge people $100 an hour to speak to me over the phone.
100%. I learnt the numbers 0-9 in Mandarin Chinese and I know how to cuss in Chinese to Chinese robocall scammers.
I also have a social sciences research background so I have no disincentive or misguided desire to respond with wrong data to polls either.
- I also answer all calls I get and (usually) call back if they missed me. I actively gave my number to one or two research groups for polls. They call maybe twice per year, so it's alright.
  As for scammers, maybe 10% of calls are of that sort and so far I enjoy messing with them when they call.
If it's a number I don't know and it's a scam. I always try to pick up and insult their parents for not raising them right.
Probably 20-30%. I don't answer calls from different area codes than mine
- I'm in the opposite camp - never answer calls from area codes same as mine. Scammers now target numbers with same area code as the one they're spoofing. If also the first 3 digits after the area code match too, that's an even higher chance of a scam.
  
  I don't have the same area code as the area I live in so it's pretty simple to weed spam calls out
My phone is on silent 99% of the time, unless I’m expecting a call for something important. I miss most calls except for when I’m already looking at my phone, and honestly I rarely answer even if I see it. It works though. Most of it is spam. People close to me know I prefer texting.
99%. I just don't answer Anonymous calls because nothing good comes from that.
But there was a time where I could not even answer unknown numbers because I was in some kind of spam database and got 5-10 calls a day. It went on for weeks and they changed the number every time. Simply hitting decline didn't stop it. I ended up setting my phone to block all calls not in my contact list (while still looking into my caller list occasionally) and a few weeks later it stopped. Now I became more trustful again.
I don't get calls often anyways.
All of them unless I'm asleep while putting my phone on silent mode , or listening to the lecture , or I didn't hear the ringtone
Basically none at this point. Unless it's recognized as coming from one of the handful of people in my address book, or occasionally if I'm expecting a call (like from a doctor or the mechanic or something). But otherwise there's no point. No one that would contact me or that I would want to contact me would use the phone - they would text, IM, email, etc. The odds of a phone call being junk or a scam is far too high to bother with.
I don't have mine on me except when traveling and I easily don't get to it before voicemail. Wish we had configuration on how many rings before voice mail or forwarding or such. So I miss a lot but a fair amount I will call right back. I will answer some I don't recognize but im in a passive job search. Preference wise its talk in person, then phone, then email, and I do my chat via email.
If the phone rings, by the time I get to it they've usually already hung up or reached voicemail, so I only end up answering if its important enough to call me twice.
Close to 0%
All those with a known number attached (or when I'm expecting an unknown call). Probably 70-80%. But I rarely call, maybe like once or twice a month
100℅ which is zero in the last 30 days

47 comments