I serve customers of varying levels of technical ability.     Often times I write these update e-mails that are a little on the “honors class” side of things. I try to give a buffet of ideas and then clients will contact me and pick out bits and pieces.   Could you do that part for me?  Could you implement option 1 of the three you presented?

Today, I want to give you a solution that is so low tech I think all of you can appreciate it.  The solution would have worked in 1985 and it will work today.  I hope I didn’t lose anyone.

Scam phone calls bother all of us.  For some reason I know a lot of people who are 60+ that get a lot of these calls.   They could be from fake charities, tech support scams, lottery scams, mortgage scams, credit card scams, or the scam of the day.  I can’t claim this solution is original but it was used by a client very effectively until his passing a few years ago.   Dennis was a good guy, but definitely on the low tech end of the spectrum.

Here is the beef….   You connect an answering machine to your home phone. I  know some of you may have a fancy voicemail built into your home phone or may use Comcast voicemail (ie. a voicemail that you have to dial into).  Forget about those for a second.  I am suggesting a low tech $15 ATT answering machine from Amazon like this one.  http://amzn.to/2lKc736   The reason one of these answering machines works so well is that it is the kind that allows you to HEAR the messages as they are being left.   An online or more sophisticated answering system is too high tech for this approach.

1.  Set the answering machine to 2 rings

2.  Have no recorded message at all, just a beep.  Or you can record, please leave your message. (If you want to be funny, you could use the recorded “SPEAK” ala Rent).

3.  Legit callers will just start speaking and you can pick up the phone to talk with them.

4.  Fake callers are more than likely not going to bother when they hear that beep

This simple solution is going to help you fight back against telephone troublemakers.  Furthermore, it is a solution that will allow you receive your messages when you are away from the phone.   There are higher tech solutions available, especially if you feel like you must use your phone company’s voicemail service. No Mo Robo is one option.  Ultimately, I wanted to give you a “back to basics solution” that anyone can implement.