I have a landline and an answering machine. A dozen times a day, I get calls. Most of them hang up (good). But the rest start their calls with “Hello?” Sometimes they’ve bothered to do a reverse-lookup so they call me by name. Many times, they go on with something like “Hello? Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me?” This absolutely sets my teeth on edge.
These vermin know they’re talking to an answering machine. The polite approach is to say, “Hello, this is So-and-so calling on behalf of Big-Evil-Company about Such-and-such. If you wish to discuss this, please call us back at blah-blah-blah.” And hang up.
Talking to my answering machine and saying, “Hello? Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me?” is like walking into my house and shouting at me. If I’m here, I still don’t hang up on these swine, because then they’d know I was here. But when I replay the messages and I hear, “Hello?”, I delete without hearing any part of the message.
I purely hate cold-callers.