This idea is certainly brilliant, I just can’t work out if it has any practical value whatsoever.
It starts off with the premise that people often forget to lock their phones and make useless calls to other people. The caller doesn’t know it’s happening and the recipient is left hearing muffled sounds as a mobile moves around the caller’s handbag or pocket and hangs up. Worse is when it goes to the recipient’s voice mail and the call lasts 30 seconds or so, contributing nicely to your friendly operator’s revenues.
So, a charity in Holland got the idea that if these useless calls could be turned into something positive, the world would be a better place and everyone would benefit. That’s where the brilliant thinking came in.
Their solution is to get people to add “A blind call” (it’s a charity for the blind) as an entry into the mobile’s address book. Which means that unless you know someone called Aardvark, A Blind Call is probably number one in your address book. That’s because the theory is that it’s the first person in the address book that gets all these calls.
From then on, if you inadvertently hit that button, your call gets routed to the charity, which gets a cut of the revenue, automatically disconnects after 30 seconds and the most the caller gets charged is Euro 0.75.
I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of some of these calls - and in fairness, probably made a few myself - but I was under the impression that the most frequent use case was that it’s the last number redial that gets activated. Which is why I wonder about the practicality.
But then “Russell” is not high up in most people’s address books and I wouldn’t be the victim very often, would I? So if there are any Abigails, Aarons or Aardvarks reading - does this happen to you very often?
Ha! This used to happen to me a lot, and from the address book rather than last number (weird but true) - and I have always used a Nokia. Anyway, I created a name AAAAA with the phone number 12345 which of course solved my problem as it just doesn’t connect. Sorry Dutch Charity.
I do have an Aaron, so I now have an entry for Aaaaa. I have it calling my other phone line, so I know when the problem is happening.
As my name is Andrew, I can say that I have received more calls of this nature than most… ;(
It’s the best when you do this while roaming internationally, as I did when I was in the UK in October. I guess that $40 was my stupid tax payment for the year.
Even better were the 300-odd text messages I inadvertently sent while I ran the San Francisco half marathon.
All the calls and SMS went to my girlfriend’s father, no less. Fortunately, I’ve since been turned on to AutoLock for S60, which automatically locks the keys after a certain amount of time.
I thought it was a Belgian idea/organisation, not a Dutch one
Pétr - thanks for the clarification.
Russell