COLUMBIA, S.C. — It's an issue most of America can agree on: Robocalls are a disruption to our lives.
Last year, South Carolinians received over 1 billion robocalls from unknown callers. Many consumers believe the problem is getting worse, as their phones continue to ring off the hook from numbers they don't recognize.
WLTX is part of a company-wide investigation looking into how these robocalls work and what can be done about them.
For one hour on Columbia's Main Street in the Vista, our crew set up with a sign that read "Do robocalls annoy you?" Many of you stopped by to share your opinions.
"It takes up a lot of my time," said Frank Crump, who says he receives between 10 and 15 robocalls a day. "I have to call these numbers back as well. As a business owner you wanna make sure you're not missing anything."
"It's just a telemarketer trying to sell me something that I don't want," explained Joshua Graham, who said he receives robocalls as late as 9 p.m. "After hours the first thing you expect when you get a phone call is a family member. It annoys me really, really bad."
"I've had to turn my phone off during the day because they've harassed me so badly. I'm sick and tired of it," said Liz Wright. "Any of them I hate, especially the extended warranty robocalls."
"They'll be talking about cars you don't even have," Marcus Williams told us. "I get at least 40 to 50 [robocalls] a day...Sometimes you wonder how people get your number."
"It just wears you out on a daily basis," said Crump. "I wish something could be done about it."
RELATED: How do robocalls work?
In March of this year, 2 billion more robocalls were made nationwide compared to the same time last year.
Data from robocallindex.com says nearly 5 billion calls were placed averaging about 15 calls per person.
Calls in April took a dip, with the average person receiving 13.5 calls for the month.
Out of all the robocalls made in the United States, 23% are alerts and reminders, 12% are specifically payment reminders, 23% are telemarketing calls and the majority at 43% are scams.
In South Carolina, out of the 1 billion robocalls estimated in 2020, over 410 million calls were to the Columbia area.
Many calls were in disguise appearing to come from local area codes.
"It is so easy for a robocaller or a random person to cover their real phone number with any phone number of their choosing," said Bailey Parker, Communications Director for the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs. "So what they do is they get this long list of phone numbers from South Carolina and then they cover their phone number with the South Carolina phone number because they know that South Carolinans are more likely - and any other state for that matter - are more likely to answer phone calls from the state that they're currently living in."
How are robocallers getting our information?
"Telemarketers have to get your name from someplace, right? They're getting it because they're buying it from somebody," said Dave Maxfield, a Consumer Protection Lawyer in Columbia.
Maxfield says our information is sold all the time in many different ways.
"Calling lists would be no exception to that," he explained. "One of the few things that Congress has been able to agree on within the last 20 years is that this is a huge problem and we're going to do something to try and protect consumers, but you have a huge pushback from different industries who say, 'Well, we really like being able to call people and get them whenever we want. That's pretty valuable to us'."
At WLTX, we wanted to see how quickly robocalls start coming in. So we activated a phone with a new number. Two days later we received our first robocall.
While we can block numbers, install robocall blocking apps on our phone, or ignore these calls all together - no matter what we try, the problem persists.
"What people don't understand about robocalls is the technology is so good that you could have a call center with maybe 20 people in it that can make 1 million calls a month," said Maxfield. "There's probably no other area at least in consumer protection right now that's going through so many changes and has so many challenges to it. It's so at-risk for just being junked and thrown into the ashes of history."
To learn more about what you can do to stop these robocalls, click here.