Evil new form of mobile phone spam . . .

[roddy]

Grrrrr, this irritates me.

CRBT's, or color ring back tones, 彩铃, is the service that allows you to control what callers hear when they are waiting for you to answer your mobile or fixed-line phone. Normally they just hear a ringing tone, but pay a monthly and per-CRBT fee and you can allow / force your callers to listen to your favorite song, a comedy message, etc.

However, the operators seem to have decided that those of us who don't want to play represent a rather handy resource - since getting a new Liaoning Mobile SIM card I've found that I've been 'gifted' a CRBT - a cheesy song, followed by an advert for . . . .. CRBT services. According to this snippet Unicom is all set to sell the space as outright advertising.

So it might be worth giving yourself a call and seeing if your callers are getting annoyed by this. I haven't yet figured out how to turn it off - I suspect it will involve paying for the CRBT of my choice though . . .

to China Mobile!

[BrandeX]

In the year that I have been calling to/in China I have never once heard a phone line ring while I was waiting for the other party to answer. They have always played songs or occasionally made a beeping tone.

[zhwj]

There are some people I'm thinking of giving up on calling, simply because those ringback tones are so annoying - I don't need any more Kenny G than what I get in the normal course of my life.

[liuzhou]

They did that to me about two years ago and I kicked up hell, so they switched back to a proper ringing. But then they donated me a lovely, cheesy song again about six months ago. All efforts to get them to change it back again have failed. Most of my friends and family have tried to call me from th UK and assumed that they have reached a wrong number. Also, I use my phone for work and think it just sounds childish and unprofessional to have these horrible pieces of music.

But what really bugs me is that China Telecom have installed these awful payment machines. Instead of the lovely human beings we had before, they have these stupid machines which require you to enter your phone number twice, then insert some cash. Of course the maximum you can pay without repeating the performance is ¥100. My phone is on contract and I usually pay between ¥500 and ¥1,000 at a time. To pay ¥1,000 I have to enter my phone number 20 times and insert the pictures of Mao ten times. It takes all frigging day!

[Rincewind]

I wonder if you can buy add space on the ring of specific numbers. For example, can I pay for my add to be played in the ring tone of all my competitors' schools?

[shibole]

Sounds like China needs a national "do not f--- with my ring" list.

[roddy]

Does this still happen? Came across a reference to it in a translation and got curious.