Why am I getting so many unsolicited acquisition and sales calls?
Growing businesses attract an overwhelming volume of spam, sales, and acquisition calls within hours of a number becoming active. This flood of calls forces owners to pay for artificial virtual answering services or call blockers just to manage the daily disruption.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Ignoring the callsDid this help you?
- 2Hanging upDid this help you?
- 3paying for a virtual answering serviceDid this help you?
- 4using an interactive voice response system that requires callers to press a digit before ringingDid this help you?
- 5Turning on call screening functionsDid this help you?
- 6Porting the phone number to Twilio and setting up an IVR with a secret extensionDid this help you?
- 7Ignoring the calls and waiting for them to eventually stopDid this help you?
- 8entertaining the conversation politelyDid this help you?
- 9reading salespeople the riot act when they call during holidaysDid this help you?
- 10telling reps directly that you do not want to grow or be busierDid this help you?
- 11Hanging up on callers immediatelyDid this help you?
- 12Asking point blank if it is a sales call and cutting them offDid this help you?
- 13Telling callers to take the company off their list and hanging upDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I just received a phone call from owner.com. I have no interest in their services for several reasons. I was just being polite with the sales rep and entertained the conversation.”source ↗
“I had a recent experience with a DoorDash salesman. Typical sales pitch of increasing sales, he didn’t understand was money is no longer a driving force behind my decisions.”source ↗
“I've just had three back to back cold calls (less than 3 minutes apart) from slimy salesmen trying to get me to either buy or divulge information about our business and I'm sick to the back teeth of it.”source ↗
“I can't be the only one who feels this way, surely?”source ↗
“I would love to have that luxury but I deal with so many customers, suppliers and other third parties that use unknown or unsaved numbers that simply not answering a number I don't recognise is not an option.”source ↗
“Within 24 hours of the number being active I had received 67 spam or sales calls! I couldn’t believe it!”source ↗
“To the point that I had to pay for a virtual answering service (you know the artificial ones).”source ↗
“I’ve received 98 phone calls in two days.”source ↗
“Had to turn on the call screening function.”source ↗
“One guy told me the calls will never stop unless I sign up for their services.”source ↗
“I got hit with this the moment I started Yelp.”source ↗
“I've been getting more as I've grown.”source ↗
“That! My blocker has answered & blocked a total of over 200 calls within 48 hours! 😱🤯”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 26Why does visiting Egypt feel like constant scams and harassment?
- 7Why do small businesses miss incoming phone calls?
- 3How do I stop friends and family from backseat driving my business?