Thank you for your service, but that is a massive waste of your time. Use Lenny.
These calls are using an anti-pattern of most people who are disinterested will hang up, but those who are interested will continue to talk to the person.
Their economic model depends on uninterested parties hanging up as quickly as possible. To disrupt their economics, take their call.
I know things are a bit different in the US and Canadia where the mobile/cell call receiver also pays for minutes. Here in the UK, and the rest of Europe, only the call initiator pays for the call. If you are calling from a land you will pay a higher rate to call a mobile (an 07 number).
You're right, though in all fairness, your solution doesn't scale fast enough. Most people won't altruistically do something like you did. We could use something that would be easy to set up and that would start generating significant costs for the callers without bothering callees much.
RE Lenny, how is one even supposed to use that? :o.
You could transfer calls to a SIP extension (or via a number of PSTN numbers in different locations). Unfortunately the original service is now defunct, but I'm sure there are some private closes in operation.
There's an archive of recordings on youtube linked from https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ -- some are hilarious and sure to brighten anyones day.
That has changed in recent years. My postpaid cell plan (Verizon) now offers "unlimited talk" and "unlimited text". The only variable is how many GB of data a month you want to pay for. AT&T is similar. Just choose the amount of data.