Few things are more annoying than kids calling your house to ask, “is your refrigerator running?” Prank calls are hard to avoid and even more difficult to put up with. Thankfully, there are several tricks to stop harassing prank calls from bothering you and your family. With a little creativity and a lot of patience, you can stop these calls and return to sanity in no time. Here are 10 ways to stop prank calls:
- Hang Up: Hanging up is generally the first plan of action. Prank callers just want to get a reaction out of you, so if you hang up without responding, then they won’t get what they called for. Hanging up may cause pranksters to keep calling until you respond, but most will stop and move on to their next victim.
- Get Caller ID: If you have caller ID, you can stop prank calls at the source. As long as the caller doesn’t block their number, you’ll be able to see who keeps calling and can start taking action. With caller ID, you’ll also have the option of ignoring the prank calls or picking up to give them a piece of your mind.
- Don’t Pick Up: Ignoring the calls completely is another successful approach to stopping prank calls. If you don’t pick up, they can’t get a rise out of you and they’ll eventually give up trying.
- Threaten to Call the Police: Sometimes all you have to do to stop prank calls is to threaten to call the police. If the word “police” doesn’t put an end to the calls, then you may have to actually file a police report.
- Have a Comeback Ready: Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. Chances are you’re probably much older and wiser than these kiddos, so why not try out some of your own comebacks and leave them speechless?
- Set Up a Trap: Your local phone company can help stop prank calls by setting up a trap on your phone line that will trace the phone number of the caller. Once they’ve traced it, they can block the number for you. Traps are generally set up for two weeks and most phone companies don’t charge a fee for this service.
- Unplug Your Phone: Unpluging your phone can stop prank calls from driving you nuts all night. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to receive phone calls until you plug it back in, but it may be the most effective strategy for temporarily stopping the calls.
- Block Them: Talk to your phone company about blocking anonymous calls so that no mysterious callers or pranksters will be able to get through. While you’re at it, get them to block the prank caller’s number so you can avoid them at all cost.
- Call Their House: If you want to put an end to the prank calls, try calling the number back. If you’re dealing with youngsters, you can call back and ask to speak to their mother or father, or you might get lucky and a parent will pick up. Once you’ve got a parent on the phone, you can tattle on their child and hope that the calls stop then and there.
- Change Your Away Message: One proven way to stop harassing prank calls is to record a new message on your answering machine that will scare them away. In the away message you’ll want to include that you’ve been receiving harassing calls and there’s a trap on the line that will trace and report them to the local phone company. Whether or not you really have a trap set up, you can be assured that they won’t be bothering you after hearing this message.
