I don't use call blocking or caller ID. I don't answer the phone when I don't want to be disturbed, ie dinner hour or when I'm working (I work at home). It is simple to turn off the ringer.

Someone above mentioned the "dead air delay" as I call it. You often get that with the phone banks. Everyone in my house now knows to hang up when they hear the sound, as it is a phone solicitor.

My children have been taught, when answering a phone solicitation, to politely ask "is this a phone solicitiation?" and then say "we don't accept phone solicitations" and immediately hang up. Simple to do. I never cease to be amazed at the fact that people don't understand that they are using your politeness against you. GET OVER IT PEOPLE! JUST HANG UP THE PHONE ON THEM!

You can, of course, spend money on the technology the phone companies want you to spend money on, which never deals entirely with the problems THEY created with these monsters. But as someone else also said, there is no foolproof way of stopping their calls from coming through, without blocking other calls you want to get.

The one saving grace of the whole phone solicitation thing is that they don't clog up my voice mailbox with messages.If they don't reach a person with a pulse, they keep dialing.

You can also put ID blocking on your line (when you call others, your number is blocked). I think I've had to do the *82 thing once or twice in the past year. Oftimes, if I can't get my call through to the business (it is always a business that requires this in my experience), I just decide to take my business elsewhere.

I'm not going to do anything to help them harrass and/or intimidate me to get me to buy their product/service!