To think that people should announce who they are when they call you?

[LadyOfTheCanyon]

-Is it something that has happened since the advent of mobiles, where you can see who is calling you ?

I deal with probably 30-40 calls a day at work on the land line, and the amount of people who just start talking without telling me who they are is ridiculous- they know who I am because there's only me here but they must think that I'm excitedly sitting by the phone thinking " Oooo I hope the guy with the Irish accent who works for a supplier that I deal with perhaps twice a year calls today! Because I'll TOTALLY RECOGNISE HIM IMMEDIATELY. "

I've had three of these in a row. Is it just me?

YANBU. It also really drives me mad when I answer the phone and the person at the other end immediately says 'who am I talking to please"? You rang me so you bloody introduce yourself first and then I'll decide if I want to give you my name.

I think we all think we're the main character in the story of life, and as we become busy and stressed out with work and things like that we get sloppy about checking that main character feeling.

YANBU. I had a phone call the other day. Lady said. Am I speaking to Mrs...... I say yes. She says please can you confirm your full name date of birth and address and postcode for data protection. I said please can you tell me your name and which company you are calling from? She said no due to data protection. I said bullshit and hung up

I agree.

Yes - I know exactly what you mean!

I didn't grow up in the UK so have a completely different accent so everyone knows who I am the second I answer the phone , and because I didn't grow up here I find most people tend to sound the same to me. Which would be ok, if it wasn't that customers etc tend to call me and start the conversation with, "Hi - it's me!"

Surely stating your name is just common sense, not to mention good manners?

I struggle to tell people apart on the phone. I can recognise my immediate family but unless there's something really distinctive about a voice I often have no idea who it is. So yes I would like people to identify themselves!

I usually make a right spanner of myself by calling, beginning talking, then introducing myself in the middle of the 3rd-5th sentence.

My colleagues do make an unreasonable whinge though of 'Someone just called me - I'll call them back - FFS, why are they engaged when they just called me?'

Ooh, I dunno, because they didn't set aside an hour of their day to make and receive calls from you? Because someone else called them? Because they nipped to the loo?

I get this too at work, yanbu OP. I can generally get a clue if I ask for an order number or a component number which are all customer/vendor specific where I work. The other way around and I’m calling them I always say ‘hi, this is Insight from ACME Corp.’ Do me a favour and do the sam, you are not that important or memorable as a voice on the phone, give me your name and company up front.

I also get the ones who call asking to speak to ‘John’, obviously they can’t be expected to know or even guess that we have 5 ‘Johns’ who work at our place, it’s not that big a company! So then I have to ask which John. And they don’t know so we have a question and answer session to try and narrow it down. Again, if you’re dealing with a specific person at a company get their full name/title. Fortunately our Johns all have very different roles but even so.

And from the other side, we have a couple of people here who don’t ask who the caller is and transfer it or announce it on the paging saying ‘John/Insight/Mary you have a call’. Great. Which John if it’s for John. And who is it? Is it someone we want to speak to or is it a telesales call? Get a bloody name and company so we know who we’re dealing with.

Same as those irritating people who do not answer their landline with their number.

Or who have a voicemail message that does NOT start with "This is an answering machine on 01980 613121. Leave a message after the tone."

Or the receptionists who have answered the phone 437'296 times so far today and greet you with

goodmorningjoebloggsjamessmithjohnjonesandassociatesamemberofthefranshisecompanyyouhaveneverheardofbeforewinnerofwidgetsupplieroftheyear2003maddyspeakinghowmayihelpyou

I blame Brexit/schools/the youth of today/poor management/lack of training/foreigners/American television/social media/climate change/nasty Tory politicians/incompetent Labour politicians/invisible Liberal politicians/the SNP/the DUP delete as applicable.

Telephone etiquette eh. My least favourite are the ones who simply say, who's that? My usual answer, dunno, who the hell are you? We were trained, organisation, department perhaps, name, position probably for technical stuff. Simple things, readback, you give me a long number or perhaps unusual name, well, I read it back to you. Even some cops haven't been trained in this basic stuff. Then there's the, hi tone mate, it's Fred from bloggs supplies, how's it going? I don't believe we've met, and to you it's Mr Smith, and I ain't your mate. Then perhaps there's the professional outside your field who peppers their comments with initialisms and TLAs, after the fourth time of saying, could I just stop you there a sec, I get exasperated. It's quite intriguing, having recently had dealings with individuals in the NHS where communication was their business they have manifestly had no training whatsoever in telephone technique. People think others are psychic, and as you say, hanging on their call perhaps.

I've had people phoneme and they have got a wrong number and they start getting aggressive and demanding who I am and what my number is. I always say 'no, who are you and what number are you trying to phone' then I say 'well you've dialled incorrectly'.

I find a lot of people are generally quite rude, entitled and self absorbed.
Delivery people who have got the wrong house and get all pushy as if you don't know your own house number etc.

I always ask who people are when they phone, I judge the professionalism of a company/service on whether they introduce themselves properly.

(Obviously sometimes they have to confirm your name before they say who they are as they are being confidential - hospitals/surgery and so on.)

When I first started at my company and was a secretary, we used to have to answer our executives' lines with "Good morning, Joe Blogg's phone, this is CantWaitToRetire speaking, how may I help you". It was polite but seemed to take soooo long!

BTW, I never answer my home landline by saying my own phone number. Do people even do this?

No KurriKurri hospital, debt-collector, taxman, whoever they are it works both ways. They can ask to speak to Mrs Y without saying which organization they are calling from if it’s sensitive and if you’re not Mrs Y you can say so. I agree you don’t have to divulge your name if they’re not going to first divulge theirs when they’ve called you.

When I was a child it was quite normal to answer the phone by giving the number. I haven't heard anyone do that in years and years.

My favourites go like this:
Me: "Hello?"
Caller: "Hi, can I speak to Ten?"
Me: "Speaking."
Caller: "Hi Ten, how are you today?"
Me: [annoyed] "Who's calling please?"

Don't ask me how I am when you don't even care and HAVEN'T TOLD ME WHO YOU ARE. Spammers, mostly.

Yes they should. They are invading my day so the first thing they should do is say "hi satsuma it is x".

If you don't want to say who you are because of "data protection" then don't call in the first place. Write or email. Though I can't see why it's ok to write to an address on file and assume the person who opens the letter lives there but not phone someone and assume the person who answers the phone lives there. The confidentiality argument doesn't wash - they are calling me.

If I called them it would be reasonable for them to ask me to confirm who I am. But not the other way round. If people call me out the blue and want me to confirm personal details I just say I'm not doing it and they can write to me if it's that urgent and confidential. I've even had someone want personal info confirming for a meter reading! Since when has a meter reading been personal data?