Youre doing it wrong. If you squeal down the phone then they will just hang up.
Start talking to them, have a remote doorbell handy and press the button. Tell them someone is at the door and you need to answer it, you're interested in what they are selling so hang on.
Put the phone on the side and walk off .......
Hi,
Excellent idea there.
I have another problem here though, and that is that i get a lot of machines calling with prerecorded messages rather than a live operator. In fact, it is so stupid that it doesnt even wait until my answering machine finishes it's own message, they go right into their sales pitch so if i do listen to the message later all i get is half the message anyway. It's nuts.
My message says something like, "We are not at home right now but if you leave a message we'll get back to you" and then of course a beep, but as soon as the phone picks up they start their own message so the first part doesnt get recorded. It's kind of funny really, but they call too much.
Other times they have a machine that makes the call and a human operator does not get on the line unless someone picks up the phone.
I've considered many things to help the situation but it's not as simple as it sounds. Even a machine that hangs up on unrecognized numbers could hang up on a wanted call because the caller made the call from a phone they dont normally use, and this could happen for someone i know during say a storm for example when their regulator phone line goes down temporarily.
I have come up with one idea but it would take a little time to implement. Give out special codes to people i know like 1-2-3-4 (four digits probably enough) and when they call ask them to enter their pass code and that would connect to the main phone, otherwise they could not get through. It would be like asking for an extension number. If they enter a valid code they get through, an invalid code they get hung up on.
The only downside is everyone you know has to memorize the code so that would be a bit of a burden on them. Maybe some other kind of coded system.