Phone etiquette in Argentina -please help

Gates

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Hello everyone. I having been Buenos Aires for about 4 months now, but discovered today that I still might be abreast of proper phone etiquette. I have some questions, but also hope that this thread might be used by others with questions about speaking on the phone.

My question is, if you do not know who someone is that called you, what should you say? I had an unrecognized number call me, and we went through the whole "hola/hola; como va/bien" introduction. He asked me a question, and I responded "disculpame, pero quien es esto?". He did not understand me, and eventually hung up. I'm pretty sure he had the wrong number, but still, I would like to know what I should have asked in that situation as he seemed really confused.

Any help would be appreciated. As well, feel free to post your own questions here regarding phone usage.
 
Usually they will say who they are:

Me: "Hola Gates. Soy Mini".
You: "Hola Mini, ?como te vas?"

If I don't say who I am they you would say:
"?Quien habla?"

Then you could ask:
"?Con quien quieres hablar?" who do you want to speak to.

If you think they misdialed then you say:

"Pienso que te equivocaste". I think you've made a mistake.
 
proper cell phone etiquette is that if you are no pesos left on your phone to borrow any one else's phone as much as possible to make calls.
 
I normally just say ‘Quien es?’
I’ve been getting strange calls lately, Spanish won’t say who it is, and I’ve only ever given my number to 3 or 4 people, none of who are Argentinean!
 
Arty - jaaaaaaaaaa! Tenes razon :)

When I get a call from an unknown number, the first question I ask after saying hello (assuming I don't recognize the number) is "Quien habla?" Dito with texts.

And mini - here it is "Con quien queres hablar" - they don't use quieres ;) Argentines always have to be difficult:D
 
citygirl said:
Arty - jaaaaaaaaaa! Tenes razon :)

When I get a call from an unknown number, the first question I ask after saying hello (assuming I don't recognize the number) is "Quien habla?" Dito with texts.

And mini - here it is "Con quien queres hablar" - they don't use quieres ;) Argentines always have to be difficult:D

I use both "tú" and "vos." Pretty hilarious. I've come to the conclusion that it will be like that for a while. It's really hard to go back on 9 years of Spanish instruction where "tú" this and "tú" that was repeatedly drilled in my head.
 
I get loads of wrong numbers, the easiest thing to do is start speaking in English, then they with ask for you by name or hang up. Especially useful when people try and sell things to you, I've yet to find a sales person that is will to try selling to me in English..
 
Lee said:
Is this really a problem?

If this your biggest problem here then...well...you live a charmed life I must say!

:)

lol -- Lee in our house it is a HUGE problem -- ICANA, the English language institute misprinted their brochure with OUR number in it, so we get on average 2 calls a day from people looking for the english school. Being that it's January and people are back into thinking about classes, it's up to 10 calls.

The funniest thing is these people call our house, I pick up and say Hola, they usually say "Icana??" in a very confused voice, I tell them no they've equivocaste'd, and then they get even more confused because they are trying to call and American english language institute and here they are obviously talking to a foreigner with an accent... so now I end up having to go into the whole explanation of the fact that the brochure is wrong... a few more calls from now and I'll actually get online and find out their real number so I can just give it out!!

I remember a few years ago I used to go to a hair salon up on Acoyte. They had misprinted their cards and the phone number on their website, so when you called for an appointment, you got a guys answering machine saying in a very annoyed voice, something like: You have called 4481-9834... NO this is NOT the hair salon... NO I do not cut hair... NO I cannot make you an appointment with Mauricio... Please do not leave any messages at this number for anything to do with haircuts, brushings, highlights, or anything else to do with hair. You will not receive a phone call in return.


On the kind of sad wrong number side of things... We've been living in our apartment for 3 years, almost every Sunday we get an older man calling for Alicia... he's very old, as far as we know no Alicia ever lived here, but we're always very nice to him, he always sounds heartbroken to find out that there's no Alicia here.
 
Sorry to say I find little phone etiquette here. I get a lot of phone calls for people who want the Jockey Club (seems our numbers are similar). When I explain that they have made a mistake they abruptly hang up. Never once a word of apology from people who think they are 'high class'.
 
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