Apr 15 2008
Witholding Your Number
Is there a legitimate reason for witholding your telephone number in business?
I have recently changed my phone setup in the office to divert to my mobile if the business line isn’t answered which has given me a better insight into the people who are calling my office. As a result I have noticed that every single caller who has witheld their number so far has been a call-centre or telemarketer making an unsolicited call usually to “save me money on my phone costs”.
It has reached the point where I am considering ignoring all calls from “private numbers”. There are two reasons for this:
- Productivity:
I am tired of having my work interupted to deal with an underpaid, obnoxious telemarketer from the sub-continent who won’t take “no” for an answer. - Economics:
Everytime a call is diverted to my mobile and answered I end up paying for the call. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with that but when it’s only to tell a telemarketer to “go away”, it’s a complete waste of money.
The only thing that is holding me back from doing so is the worry that there may actually be a legitimate reason for somebody to withold their number when calling a business. I cannot for the life of me think of one though - does anybody else have a good reason?
No, no there isn’t, but sometimes it can’t be helped - I know Skype by default seems to hide the number as do many VoIP systems.
So I COULD turn number sending on, I would…
Note to self don’t ring Alex, she will not take your calls.
Nice one, Gary!
Like I said, it’s not a decision I have made yet, but apart from the default behaviour of certain VOIP software, I still haven’t seen or heard a good reason for witholding numbers.
I agree with you that the bulk of calls from withheld numbers are junk, but I do know some people who have their line set to private for personal safety reasons. (ie; problems with stalkers / abusers etc). For the people I know, this is not so much that they do not want who they are calling to see their number, it is so that their contact details are not publicly searchable.
This is probably a negligible number of people when it comes to making your decision. But I think it counts as a legitimate reason. :)
@lani - that is definitely a legitimate reason but not one that would usually occur in relation to a business, although with the number of home-based businesses it could be relevant. I do believe that those in that situation would be happy to leave a message for me to call them back though.