Imagine getting a R(Really) O(Obtrusive) B(Bull-loney) O(Obnoxious) telephone call from an exiled prince who has fled from his home country with twenty million dollars that need to be protected, who is now working for the IRS or for Social Security but who has urgently taken time to remind you about the importance of extending the warranty on your car.
This stretched out load of inanity isn't all that far removed from a composite of the bogus telephone calls that have been coming people's way for a very long time. Clearly, there must be some level of successful fraud being accomplished to make continuation of these bogus calls monetarily worth it to someone.
What really gets me though is that these bogus calls, as cheap as they undoubtedly are to automatically make, are not free to the caller. There has to be some incurred cost involved. A quick look at some numbers may tell us something.
A typical incoming call gets responded to by my answering machine. When the greeting message kicks in, many of those calls terminate right away. There is apparently an ability to detect that a live person has not come on the line. That detection can take as little as maybe three seconds. Allowing for the telephone ringing time which is typically twenty-five seconds on my phone, the entire process of calling, of detecting that a human being has not responded and then hanging up might come to thirty seconds. If the next call is initiated automatically and immediately, the rate of unsuccessful outgoing calls would be two calls per minute or 120 calls per hour.
The time of day for calling would probably be when intended victims are awake. A call made at 4 AM would not likely be productive. Perhaps 9 AM to 9 PM would be the time frame. Therefore, in twelve hours, at a rate of two calls per minute, the tally of calls would come to 120 x 12 = 1440 calls per day.
I have no idea what the cost per call would be, but if it were even one cent per call, the calling cost would be $14.40 per day which for a thirty day month would be $432 per month per robocaller which would be a substantial monthly phone bill. That amount would be money regularly going straight into phone company coffers. That money would be steady revenue to the phone companies.
I find myself in some measure of doubt that any phone company would be harmed in any way by receiving such a revenue stream. I further find it difficult to imagine that phone companies are truly motivated by such circumstances to eliminating robocalling abuses.
I am left with the very strong sense that each bogus phone call I receive is the handiwork of two perpetrators, not just one.
Are you listening, Senator?
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