to not answer my phone to withheld/Unknown/unrecognised numbers

[LonerDave]

It drives me nuts.

But am I BU to not answer these calls

I always assume they are nuisance calls.

So as long as you ask if you're speaking to the correct person "you've done your job"

Ahhhh! Another tick sheet for the NHS .....

So can you tell me loner what else we could do? Genuninely? The vast majority of my patients are elderly. I'm not going to fund a message system out of my own pocket. Management say no, budget is already overspent for this year. We post appointments out but if we get a last minute cancellation for an hour long appointment would it be a better use of mine and the nhs time to let it go to waste? The only time we EVER ring a patient is to offer a cancellation that has already been requested, they have already been informed it's from a withheld number. That's not bad service from a very stretched department imo.

God some of you are so bloody precious.

Are you really so very terribly busy that if you answer and it's an unwanted call you can't just hang up?

I really don't get all the angst.

About posing as someone else: I was in a legal dispute with someone and we didn't receive any notification of the court date which would have meant us missing it and judgement being against us.

I chased it up and the clerk said they had it on the system that the address for service of papers had been changed. We concluded that the woman who was taking us to court had probably phoned them pretending to be me and giving a fictitious address. He said he had no proof of that but people sometimes did it.

I wondered why they allowed people to change details over the phone and he agreed it seemed mad but said there wasn't much they could do about it.

He put a note on my file saying not to accept any changes without challenging the caller.

I still answer calls though. If it's sales or PPI I say I'm not interested. Sometimes I chat. It gets lonely working from home

this is funny

Recently the PPI etc cold callers have somehow been able to phone with my local code at the front of their number and have caught me out a couple of times. So now I don't even answer if it's a number with a local code.

We have to withhold ours as for some reason if people dial 1471 it comes up with a different line which we can't take incoming calls on

Then you have a simple problem with your phone system that needs to be put right. It's unreasonable to expect every one of your patients to accept all anonymous calls just in case you want to call them one day.

Our dentist and GP surgery both show their numbers when calling us.

Instead of berating people for not answering calls, NHS workers should be blaming the real culprits - the PPI companies, free boiler companies, ambulance chasers, fake PC support lines, and other scammers. If you work in the NHS you have probably never experienced trying to work or look after your children at home and being called 9, 10, 11, 12 times a day by these arseholes. It is extremely annoying and it can start to feel targeted and threatening. The logical response is to take back some control and only answer calls when convenient and/or when you know who is calling.

To all those saying it's precious, you do realise that when you answer these calls they put you on a database to call more often because they know it's a live number and you are succeptible don't you? The only way to deal with these people is to take anonymity out of phonecalls and not answer the phone to them.

Society has changed, for the worse in this respect and I think the NHS may need to modernise their approach, especially if missed appointments are becoming such an issue.

It's not about being precious, an elderly relative got scammed as answered a call & they said are you ...... Said yes, got a load of personal info out of them.

Bank Account emptied within days

Well Said fora!!

OP, perfectly reasonable.
But I answered to an unknown number this morning and it was a man giving good news and advising me that £250 will be arriving in my bank account shortly. So they're not all bad.

The NHS send texts to me, it works well. The nuisance callers target my dad, he's 83 and lives alone.

My aunt was also targeted by fake Microsoft Support scammers. Unknown call. They got £15000 out of her accounts. She was devastated and suffers long term depression as a result as she felt "stupid"

Many of my 70+ year old patients don't have email....

From "MumsPages" - the periodical aimed at helping Mums Make Contact. February 1970 edition:

"Many of my 70+ year old patients don't have a telephone...."

Just because one segment of society doesn't have access to a communications tool is no need to require the rest of us to use dip'n'scratch quill pens.

well, your 'phone, your rules. Not a huge issue really, I think.

I answer because sometimes calls on Skype come up as odd/withheld/unknown numbers. Also my boss comes up as withheld and, as someone else mentioned, schools and hospitals.
If it's a nuisance call, I am quick to say "sorry, not a good time" and end the call.

Just because one segment of society doesn't have access to a communications tool is no need to require the rest of us to use dip'n'scratch quill pens.

True LurkingHusband but the NHS quite rightly makes a huge issue of health inequalities and not having access to texts or email is one of them.

My mum didn't have them or even an answerphone - she thought they encouraged burglars . But she was still entitled to health care and quite contemporary in other ways, sometimes more daringly modern than much younger people.

Somehow they managed to make contact with her.

Still, she's dead now, that's one more of the Luddites out of the way...

That's not meant nastily towards you btw. But if you are dealing with people like her, then you have to find ways around it. Her reasons for not having broadband or a phone contract were perfectly reasonable - she didn't want to pay for them and she wouldn't let us either.

But emails get stuck in spam filters, which is more or less the same thing.

Both my GP surgery and hospitals I attend leave voicemail, saying who it is and asking me to phone them back. Just as well really, as often I can't answer my phone in work hours.

I'm glad I don't think I'm too important to answer the phone.

Gosh what an enlightening contribution. That's it, people don't answer the phone to unknown numbers, not becasue they don't want to show scammers that the phone number is live, not because they feel threatened, harassed or targeted, not because they are fed up of all the spam and don't want to play the game. No, its becasue they're too important! Yep that's it, they've bought a communications device but they're too important to answer it when every random person tries to harass them on it. Clearly speaking to randoms on it is just beneath them, they must only use it for text and email to demonstrate their utter superiority. Oh yes, and to belittle NHS workers. Yes, that's it, of course.

It isn't compulsory to give your mobile number out to people other than friends, family, schools and medical providers.

I used to not answer calls from withheld numbers.
and then dc got ill and hospitals/drs always call with numbers withheld...

It seems that not all NHS trusts and departments have the same guidelines WRT phone calls made to patients. Schools also have different ways of contact.

I would imagine the emergency services when trying to contact you about something major that might appear as withheld.

So really, if you choose to not answer withheld numbers it's just the chance you take that you might not get important information as quickly as you would if you did answer it.
It might be a nuisance call (not in my experience, they tend to have numbers) but equally it may not.

Wrt to NHS stuff I think you can't do right for doing wrong. The base I'm at (as a student) does not come up as withheld but because people recognise the number they sometimes don't answer when they see it is us and we have to use the mobile and withhold the number so they don't know it is us and then they answer!

I all honesty I find that nuisance calls vary, sometimes they are withheld, other times they show a number. We have our landlines number as withheld all the time. And yes we use a landline, mobile signal in my village is crap. A combination of signing up to tps and our number being private means we get very few nuisance calls on the landline. Mil didn't used to answer to withheld numbers but now she has to. And you know what? She really hasn't had an increase in nuisance calls that she answers, lots of normal people now have their number withheld.