Technology frustrations

[ezdays]

I never activated Voice mail just to tick off the spammers! The phone will show the number of any calls I missed and that way I can return those that I want without having to clear out a zillion voice mails.

Unfortunately, I've been in a situation the past few years that I had to answer calls that I normally wouldn't and let those that I couldn't answer got to voice mail. Some medical and Hospice personnel that I would need to talk to have numbers that show up as "unavailable" or "private"' What I found is that a lot of spammers would hang up after about three rings, some bots seem to be able to detect voice mail and hang up. If I saw a call from my own exchange, I knew it was a spammer since I don't know anyone else with that exchange number, not even our doctors. One time I looked down and it was me calling me. I should have answered it to see how I sound trying to scam someone. My cell phone is different, I have it only for emergencies and few people I know call me on it.

And while we're still talking about cell phones, why must I have to download an app from the "app store" when I'd like to do something simple like make a grocery list? And why do they keep telling me to text "1234 to 56789", or some other numbers? Haven't a clue what that means, or what it does...