I have a couple of ways to deal with these parasites. First, I let the phone ring three full times before I pick up. I pick up and don't say anything for 2-3 seconds. If it is a computer autodialer, 80-90% of the time the computer will hang up thinking it has gotten a voice mail or answering machine. After 2-3 seconds, I say our company name, but don't give out my name. That way they don't automatically have a name if they call back and get someone else. If I still get a person and they insist, I tell them my name is "Richard Smith"(it's not). It is none of their business what my real name is, they are telescammers who are breaking the law. If they persist in calling over and over again, I tell them that my boss is available, and then I use a sports air horn right next to the phone. What are they going to do, sue me? "Your Honor, I was illegally telescamming and they deafened me!" Good luck with THAT argument. The judge might give me a medal. Reporting these "people"(I use that term loosely) to the Do Not Call Registry is futile, they are usually spoofing their phone number anyway. If you have the time, have some fun with them. See how long they will stay on hold or still be on the line if you put the phone down. Take your cordless into the bathroom and have an extended "deposit" at the Porcelain Bank, complete with very loud fake sound effects. Tell them you ARE the boss and listen to their sales pitch, never saying yes to anything, but always saying that you will look at your numbers and see what you can do. Some scammers will record any affirmative answer you give and then splice it into a call and bill you for whatever they are selling, using that as evidence of an order. Waste as much of their time as you can, because that keeps them from scamming other people, and it can be a really fun stress reliever! Anything that we can do to make this less profitable for these ticks on the butt of humanity is a plus. Feel free to pass this on or add to it with your fun ways of taking back your phone lines. If these idiots would get a real job, the world would be a better place for all of us.
Wouldn't it be nice.... if Congress finally did something that is good for "small" businesses by providing a Do Not Call List for us? Not just consumers? As a sole proprietor, I waste a lot of time answering the phone just to find these nasty, lice-ridden, disease carrying miscreant scammers hitting me up with yet another robo call. I have found that often there is a live person listening to the conversation on the caller's end... not just an autodialer. So as I listen to the message, I say:" I would rather have unnecessary dental surgery without anesthesia than talk to a skanky crack [***] like you. " Generally that gets them off the phone faster than a butt plug up pushed up between a bottom fishing collection agency's twin cheeks.
I now have all of my office lines forwarding to my cell phone. I have an app called "call blocker" that captures all but a few of the scammer calls, because they have a built in black list built over time by all of their users. When I get a call like this one where the # is not already blocked I just push a button to block it out forever---- that is, until they start calling from another number.