To not answer an unknown number

SnuggBuggy presume you were talking to me
Office landline message says that someone will call back or that they can email us at a particular email address
Company I work for has next to no income atm absolutely no spare money to take on 10 company phone contracts, which is what they'd need to do, to give phones to all of us working from home.
Just about surviving atm

I meant to say 'Everyone I know in real life answers both'

If I'm looking for work then I'd be answering to all calls.

How totally bizarre to be jobhunting and not answer the phone! The recruiter could be WFH (as the Government advises you to do) and that WFH could be at his parents in Birmingham or something. How can you expect to get a job if you don't answer the phone?!

I always answer the phone and there have been occasions when I've been really glad I have. A number I didn't recognise and my DD in a dire situation 150 miles away and needing my support, for instance.

But on MN you don't answer the phone or answer the door either, so there you go.

Everyone in real life answers both.

In these situations surely you need a work mobile phone. I'd also try and see if the answerphone message for the office land-line could be updated.

Like a lot of others, I'm working from home atm and have to use my personal phone to make calls, so have blocked my number.
There are a couple of calls that I've made which have been ignored, but one is getting totally ridiculous.
Keeps ringing the office landline, leaves a message for me to call, I ring back, he doesnt answer, I leave a message saying I've rung.
He rings the office landline, mentions he didn't answer because number was blocked, he needs to talk to me, I ring back, again not answered, again leave a message.
And it's been going on for 4 messages now from each of us
So bloody answer the phone and No I'm not going to make my personal number available to clients, thanks.

I've worked in several hospitals that do the witheld number thing. It's hard work because a lot of the patients either don't answer or set up their phone to reject them and I don't blame them. Officially if we wanted to make a phone call without withholding we were supposed to trek down to some office in the bowels of the building and fill in a form, obviously this wasn't practical so we'd just use our mobiles.

I understand these rules in the olden days when people only had landlines and you didn't know who they were shared with. It's just a load of hassle now. The restrictions on answerphone messages also don't make any sense when in most cases it's the patients private mobile number.

We also had this daft rule in one place where you had to ring, give no information as to who you were or where you are calling from until the patient confirmed their full name and date of birth, they would mostly refuse until you identified yourself and hang up.

It's also frustrating for a patient who is under several departments or different hospitals when they just miss a witheld number and have to spend time ringing around every department they are under to track down who is trying to call them rather than just ringing back one number.

Expected calls are a different matter obviously, but the person should be warned that there will be no caller ID.

As I've said before, in my experience doctors and hospitals have left messages and shown their number so it's not a universal thing.

If you have a phone consultation with a doctor at a particular time you need to answer, doctors dentists rarely leave messages as they might be picked up by someone other than the intended recipient and that is a breach of confidentiality, some people do not want others to know they have even contacted the doctor. Also ringing back doesn't work for phone consultation as doctor will be on to someone else. I completely get why people generally don't answer withheld numbers but why they don't when they are expecting a call
I don't know

Gosh, I haven’t taken my phone off silence since about 2011. (Unless I’m expecting a call, which is rare.) I only get maybe one or two phone calls a week max, and most of them are spam. I don’t know anyone who communicates via the phone any more. Even my dentist does all their booking and everything via Whatsapp.

@EmmaGrundyForPM I would assume most people on this thread are referring to calls on mobiles where you get caller ID.

I for one have not used a landline since I moved out of my parents house nearly 15 years ago

"Because of confidentiality doctors etc generally don't leave messages."

They can leave a message for you to call back.

An unknown phone call, just like a brown envelope is likely to be something bad, so I don't answer unless I'm expecting a call at that time.

People not answering scheduled calls - that's something else of course if they've been told that the call will appear without ID.

Plus the fact that any friends ring me on my mobile, plus any organisations I give my number to it's my mobile. The very fact of anyone calling the landline indicates it's almost certainly scam callers.

I really don't understand the mentality of not answering the phone to unknown numbers, it only seems to exist on MN

Because 99.9% of calls to my landline with unknown numbers are scam calls. The more you answer the calls, the more they phone. If it's important someone will leave a message and I will phone back immediately or pick up when they are still speaking.

I've had to make calls home to my class which I've been doing from my own phone, of course I've withheld the number and had about 30% not answer. Then a big complaint has gone in about me not contacting a particular student - they've clearly ignored the calls because it's a withheld number.

Why did you withhold your number? What exactly do you think they will do with it?

We never answer unknown numbers and, believe me, we have got good reason not to. If it’s important they will always leave a message. Sometimes I use various websites to look up the numbers, they are invariably accident claim line scam calls.

I'm a health professional doing telephone consults from home at the moment so withhold my number. Despite having a time parents frequently don't answer we don't leave messages as you have missed your slot. We do send a letter saying you missed it but it's hugely frustrating

I'm just going to leave it,
If it's important i'm sure they'll call back

Except if they call back you presumably still won't answer the phone because you don't recognise the number?

Emma no, I don't have caller ID .

No idea who it is when my landline rings, and that makes me very old fashioned because I still prefer to use my landline for most calls!

If it's important, I'll know the number or they can leave a message.

Except there have been pages and pages of people giving you examples of when they've had calls they needed to receive, from numbers not known to them

if someone rang me about my mum I would recognise the dialing code and probably would pick up in that case.
But mobiles don't have geographical dialling codes, and hospitals (and many other institution - eg the police) have withheld numbers, so you wouldn't recognise the dialling code.

If you want to answer the door, do so. If you want to answer unknown numbers, go ahead. But why does it matter so much that other people don't want to do the same?

It doesn't, in life generally, but people are responding, because someone has asked their opinions.
Then - like @ScubaSteven says, since shut down, many, many people are having to call others from their own phones and are - understandably - witholding their own private numbers. It is then frustrating when they then complain no-one has been in touch, when they choose not to answer.

I've had to make calls home to my class which I've been doing from my own phone, of course I've withheld the number and had about 30% not answer. Then a big complaint has gone in about me not contacting a particular student - they've clearly ignored the calls because it's a withheld number.

I think this is a silly time for people to ignore withheld numbers considering the amount of people who are working from home with only their own equipment to use. Most calls I've received lately are withheld when they'd usually have a number.