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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

Particularly sucks for me because I'm on a kidney transplant list so may get a call any time of a potential match and they didn't specific which number will call me. So basically I end up answering all these unknown number robocalls in case I miss one of these matches.

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I'm so sorry, but that's seriously the ultimate tease. Every phone call is a "MAYBE ITS MY NEW KIDNEY?!" and instead you're greated with "Your cars EXTENDED WARRANTY is about to expire, please press 1 now to speak to a representative about your cars EXTENDED WARRANTY"

To be honest, I still have a couple years wait on the kidney but there is a non-zero change of a perfect match that gets to the head of the line. And I certainly don't want to miss that.

I do have a trick in dealing with the calls though. I answer the line but say nothing. Humans will always say something if there is silence for a while. Robocalls will just hang up. And I notice if they hangup, the chance of future calls are lower.

I read somewhere that the purpose of some subset of robocalls is to simply listen for an answer to determine whether a human operator has been found.

I'm fairly convinced of that, a couple times I "press one to speak with a sales representative" and it immediately hung up on me. Or "press three to be removed from the call list" and the volume of spam calls drastically increases.

I actually just finished a couple weeks of zero spam calls and it was wonderful...if not a bit on the lonely side

I foolishly tried out the new google call screening thing, and I'm also think it increased the number of spam calls I get per day because any answer means someone is there.

It hasn’t worked poorly for me. Call volume down and I just let stuff go to voicemail most of the time.

Yea, probably not a solution for the OP comment you are ultimately replying under.. (assuming you read it)

We have a robo dialer that tries to deterimine whether there's a live (human) or recorded voice (I say try, because it's not as easy to determine as you might think), and if it thinks it's a live voice it will play a message that it's going to transfer and transfer to a live agent, otherwise it plays a message intended for voice mail.

The main reason we have this is to lighten the load of agents manually dialing phones and wasting time on getting answering machines, fax lines, disconnected numbers, etc, which costs the business money and makes it harder to reach the coverage required by our clients by a certain date.

But like I said, it's not perfect, and we are currently fighting an issue where not enough disconnected numbers are being identified as such by the carriers and our agents are having to spend a lot of time manually verifying that they are disconnected numbers.

We don't make an attempt to spoof anything, though. These are calls done on behalf of companies that have active business with you (i.e. you got a new insurance policy and the insurance company wants to ask you some follow-up questions, etc).

> We don't make an attempt to spoof anything, though.

How do your agents identify themselves?

What phone number shows up on caller id? Yours or the client's?

The script is specific to the client and campaign. They usually begin with some variation on "I am calling on behalf of <client> regarding <whatever topic the client is wanting us to talk about>."

It comes up as our phone numbers. If it came up as our clients that would require spoofing.

That sounds honest and reasonable.

Yeah, if we were doing something really shady, I don't think I would be able to justify staying here as long as I have, personally.

It's not the most rewarding job I've ever had, but it is the most high profile. I wouldn't imagine having so much of an effect on the business of multiple Fortune 100 clients just a few years ago.

> To be honest, I still have a couple years wait on the kidney but there is a non-zero change of a perfect match that gets to the head of the line. And I certainly don't want to miss that.

I got curious, and scanned https://www.organdonor.gov/ to see how one gets notified when an organ is available. I didn't see any information after a few minutes of poking around the site.

When a kidney does become available, what is the process by which you'd be notified? Do they make one phone call, and if you don't pick up, they call the next person on the list? Do they broadcast a message to you & everyone you know via every possible telecommunications & social media channel you've provided, and then give you N minutes to reply with "hey, I'm on my way to the hospital now!"

What I know is this. For each donor organ, they rank everyone one on multiple factors including compatibility, time on list, age, location, etc. Then they call up the first individual on the list and see if they are interested. If they don't get a confirmation in some time, they go to the next individual down the list.

I know of one individual who didn't reply soon enough and missed out. The next match they got was 2 years down the line but it was a very good match.

Edit: I think they do call up a couple people on the top of the list but the highest priority that calls in the time allotted will get it. Again this is still a mystery to me since I'm only half way through my wait time on list so no inquiries up to now.

there's no way they'll give up after a single phone call. but the transplant team and the person potentially receiving the transplant only have one hour to respond to a notification of an available organ before UNOS moves on to the next person down the list. edit: mind you, this is not a straightforward yes/no - the transplant center needs to make sure that this particular organ donation will work at that particular time etc. - so there's a lot of factors involved.

my stupidest (but i guess not entirely invalid) fear is that i'm listed as the primary contact for my dad in need of a kidney, and i basically can't go to any shows using yondr or any similar situation where i won't be near my phone for a while. or at least make sure that other people that will be contacted too know that i will not be available to pick up.

edit: i guess i didn't answer the specific question though! at least the center where my dad is listed - they have a bunch of contact numbers for us and i have their numbers in my address book plus a request on my voicemail msg to call me twice to bypass DND if necessary. and my dad's renal case manager knows to text/email/call me too and her direct numbers are whitelisted in my phone, always. the 1 hour limit means we (the patient/family) will have less than 1 hour to respond.

i also do believe that the center that gets the notification from UNOS also gets pinged if UNOS don't hear back at all whatsoever (like, a confirmation of the notification at minimum) within 10-15 minutes of the original notification. something like that. basically there's not really a situation where a single missed call will make or break it (unless literally someone is unreachable for the whole time.)

I'm gonna track down some people who can comment on how organ availability actually works. Who knows. Maybe there's a solution that could be wired up so you can go see a movie without worrying about whether or not a kidney suddenly becomes available.

the solution is my watch is always on and buzzes for calls :) and the center has a lot of different people to contact that can contact each other. (we have a little geographic redundancy here.)

but the reality of this is that, if you're on a transplant list, you basically won't be doing any significant/major travel or be unreachable for long periods of time.

i will say though, this depends on the organ i imagine. i think 1 hour is standard across the board, but lists/priority and other things change dramatically depending on which organ you need - kidneys are viable for longer than hearts, etc.

UNOS/OPTN is where you want to look for information on organ distribution - https://unos.org/transplantation/faqs/ "How does the matching process work?" and https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/learn/about-transplantation...

For hearts you only get one call and a few minutes to decide whether you are ready. If you don't pick up they go straight to the next person. My friend used a basic Nokia phone with a heart-wrenching message on it to prevent theft. (I'm not in the US)

Call the FCC had have the jammers ripped out

Will they leave a message? If you use something like Google Voice as your number, their voicemail will be transcribed into a text message so you can call them back within minutes, or if they can't leave a call back number, you can at least be ready for them to call you back.

By answering the phone, you're going to get even more spam calls since your number is identified as a live number.

Or you could try the call screening like what Google offers on the Pixel (and there must be other phones/apps that can do the same).

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-call-screening-h...

I'm not the original transplant commenter if that was your intent :) I already know the numbers to expect calls from (and area codes, at minimum - which significantly narrows it down) and there's no way I'd waste my time answering anywhere from 2 to 10 spam calls a day for also being in a boat where we're years out at best. Definitely would let it go to voicemail - legit calls almost always do leave one or call back immediately - and a couple minutes usually won't be a dealbreaker.

> yondr

This is the first time I've seen this and I'm appalled. What business is it of the performer whether you look at your phone? Who's paying whom? Also, wouldn't anybody trying to make an unauthorized recording just bring a decoy phone?

And since we're talking about being reachable, what about that issue? If I'm on call for work and I find that I'm required to put my phone into one of those things, I'm going to be super pissed off, because I'm going to have to go home and figure out how to get a refund. How many people have actually died because someone who's suicidal or overdosing or something couldn't contact a particular loved one in one of these phone-free spaces?

I guess this kind of thing could be cute as like a performance art thing but the company trying to push this for use at concerts and comedy shows is just cancer.

From experience in the UK you give them a list of all your contact numbers and they call those in order - your meant to tell them if your out of the country

When you get the call from the doctor on duty you discuss if your going for it or not - note they normally call two candidates and you both get to the designated hospital for final tests best match gets the kidney.

Put in something that will say if you're calling about a kidney press 1 and then it rings.

It's irresponsible on the part of the people in the kidney donor system, in addition to the general lowlife-ness of robocall firms. I like the idea that any money confiscated from the latter (ie all of it) should be used to set up more user-friendly systems for the former.

There's a service Google provides that requires a caller to state their name before it connects you. I've encountered it when calling doctors direct after hours. It seems like it'd be effective at blocking robocalls. Maybe look into that?

What is this service called? I desperately need it, I get about 10 robocalls per day.

It's baked in if you own a Pixel. Even my gen one has it...

https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en

https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9094888

Why does this service 'require' google? I see no reason why this could not be implemented entirely on the device rather than in the cloud/on someone else's computer.

It doesn't require Google. It's a service offered by Google that requires the caller to identify themselves. It could be done by anyone, but probably easiest if you have a VoIP line handling the initial call and then redirecting the incoming call to your primary number if the caller is verified (like Google voice). I've only seen this on Google Voice, but I'm sure it's a common enough solution.

The Google version is implemented on the device.

From the link someone gave in a nearby comment: "Call Screen’s on-device speech recognition lets you see a real-time transcript of what the caller is asked and how they respond." (https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9094888)

Google's phone screen feature has been nice for this. Press a button to screen incoming calls you don't recognize, so far 100% hang up by the end of the message.

Now I only wish it were the default behavior so I don't even have to press the button.

In the UK I considered getting a second cheap feature phone mobile with a long battery life when I was on the list.

We had to take the call screening off the landline as it was potentially stopping calls.

>Particularly sucks for me because I'm on a kidney transplant list so may get a call any time of a potential match and they didn't specific which number will call me.

Do these robocalls harass pagers?

I had a friend in the 90s who was waiting on an organ, his mother carried a pager in case it came in. I don't recall it ever going off even though it was back when telemarketing was arguably as rampant as robocalls are now.

This could be solved quite easily by them sending an email, and then you configuring your email filter to recognize their message and sound an alarm.

Can't you contact them on a professional basis (not as a patient), and offer them suggestions on how to fix this and make this better for everyone involved?

Would they not leave a voicemail for something as pressing as a kidney transplant? The vast majority of these calls don't go to my voicemail, and the two a month that do are easily picked up by voicemail transcription.

If you need a kidney, would you count on them leaving a voicemail?

On ththe other hand why use such a broken system for something that is literally life and death? I don’t willingly use phone calls for anything important and will be happy when they’re relegated to being a goofy fun old-fashioned thing like postcards, never used for serious business.

> On ththe other hand why use such a broken system for something that is literally life and death?

What other synchronous mode of communication is more reliable than a phone call for this use case?

FOMO. Its not like a job offer. I don't want to be playing phone tag on voicemail. I know someone who missed out and had to wait another 2 years for a match.

This is off topic but hope you are well, stranger and friend. Good luck.

so there could be hackers that spam calls to the people ahead of someone in an organ donor list? this seems like a very bad system

have your tried using apps like nomorobo or trucaller?

On VOIP landlines with nomorobo, one ring means a sad day for another scammer. :D And it's free.

Haven't tried the paid mobile version, has anyone tried it?

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