Well, the title of this reads like a horror film, at least in my mind; but anyways, why on earth do my Sims constantly receive calls from total strangers? Some strange man with a demonic-looking blonde goatee creepily calls my collegiate female Sim an upwards of two-three times per day. Their lifetime relationship is at 1. Why do these weirdo stalkers keep harrassing my beautiful Claire? I had seen a mod before to prevent this, but I cannot recall where. Does anyone else get strange, creepy calls like these? I imagine heavy breathing on the other end of the line whenever her phone rings...

I have that happen pretty often. And if it isn't a perfect stranger, it's someone who might have all of 5 Relationship points with your Sim in question.

Usually I hang up the phone as soon as that face and its pitiful Relationship score pops up on my Sim's relationships panel. But yesterday and today led to an exception: my latest college graduate (Celeste) started getting phone calls from the Cow Mascot while she was a Freshman in college. Then she went to a community lot and got a drink from the bartender. Next thing you know, the bartender started calling her up right and left out of the blue. But before I could kill the phone call with one click, I figured, "Eh. The bartender's actually a good-looking guy, and Celeste is a Romance Sim. Let's see where this goes."

She just WooHooed the bartender this morning. So I guess that's where it went.

Your mileage may vary, of course. But as long as you're not juggling 30 friendships or rushing off to work, I guess it couldn't hurt to indulge the cold-calling stranger with some idle phone chat. My own Sims have been known to call zero-relationship Sims out of the blue, so I guess turnabout's fair play. Sure, mysterious callers are rarely good news in real life. But fortunately, TS2 isn't real life. True?

[QUOTE=Pizzatron-9000]the cold-calling stranger.../QUOTE]

Maybe the calls are something like this:

"Hello, Mrs. Witchcowski? Yes, this is Floyd Wickman with On Track Realty, I was just wondering if you had thought about selling your house either now or in the near future, have you?"

And obviously the sales person is calling regularly to (attempt to) develop rapport. SimNation doesn't exactly have a Do Not Call Registry after all

When I first started playing, this was the most annoying thing in the game. But as I thought about this actually makes the game more real. I treat those calls to my sims like the calls I get from solicitors, my sims hang up on them. Unless of course the sims lives a lone and their social is way down, then they talk to the caller.

I'd say he met her somehwere, on a community lot, in class, if he calls her. Bartenders love to call my Sims, and professors too. So I just let them talk as long as they want to or have time to

Yeah, I always thought it was weird how my sims on the first day would always get a call from a downtownie asking to go downtown. I could just imagine my sims saying, "Great places downtown? What do I care; I don't even know who you are! How did you get my number? I just moved in! Don't call me again!"

I wish that professors stuck with the phone calls. You know how every University subhood always has that one professor who goes out of his or her way to come over and ring your doorbell, once or twice per day, and twice per visit, whether your Sims are living in a dorm, a rental house or a Greek house? Ding dong ding dong! "One potato, two potato, three potato...." Ding dong ding dong! "Go away, you door-to-door college professor! My Sims are writing term papers with only six hours till final exam time! Go play billiards somewhere else!"

I can't stand that professor.

I find this really annoying as well. It IS usually a perfect stranger, they have 0/0 relationship score. I cancel the call as soon as I notice but it's really irritating.

Do you have AL? I think it's probably related to reputation, if you build up a relationship with the person then they'll offer you something good like a promotion or a discount on home furnishings or a random free gift. If you have a bad reputation I've only had one so far which was where the person said "You're going to find it harder to get promoted from now on!"

I still don't like the cold calls. If my sim brings the person home from work or meets them at a community lot, then fine, they can get to know them. But unless I think my sim is particularly looking out for company or likely to meet new people (e.g. at college, I usually take it because I pretend they met in class) I always cancel the calls.

If it is one of my own sims calling as a stranger I usually let them chat on the phone. It's a nice way to build up a relationship, because they seem likely to call again in the future. If it's the random, long-haired pizza delivery guy who insists on calling multiple of my sims, I make them hang up.

I think this must be EP-related, because my Sims just don't get these calls. When I first started to play, I seemed to get almost nothing but those nagging "You're neglecting our friendship" calls that start at 4 o'clock (and if you ring them back you discover that they're at work!), but latterly my Sims have been getting more and more useful calls, often from the very Sims with whom they are trying to build a relationship. Quite often, just when I thinking, now we must speak to X, X rings up for a chat.

Actually my Sims get far fewer nuisance calls (sales calls, silent calls etc.) than we get, and we're subscribed to the Telephone Preference Service, which is supposed to stop us getting any sales or marketing calls. I really quite envy my Sims only getting calls from their friends (or would-be friends).

Lord St. Croix, the first day outing comes on the first day of a household when a downtown is attached. If you don't attach a downtown till your initial batch of CAS sims has been around for a day or two and started building up relationships, the call will be from someone with a relationship. After that initial outing, outing calls will be from friends of those you've been on dates or outings with recently. It's just that first day with no relationships that it has to be randomized.

I always assume that calls from townies I don't recognize are people the sim has met in the backgrounds of community lots. And of course sometimes it's a hobby person shilling magazines, once you get Freetime.

Cyjon has a mod here http://cyjon.net/node/110 with different parts to stop different kinds of "nuisance" calls that a player can put in one or all. One part stops Sims that the playable barely met and has a low relationship score with from calling the playable, which is what it sounds like the OP wants.

I got really tired of the calls so I put all parts in. I have my Sim call other Sims to get relationships up or go on dates, and when they aren't busy (it never failed, my college Sims always got called for a stupid outing while writing their term paper. I hate outings, so that one is really useful to me.)

Pescado's Phone Hack also drops the axe on many random stranger calls, including those from Sims that are supposed to be at work or school. I've never really had an annoying phone call since then, other than those irritating hobby magazine subscription calls, and there's a mod by Cyjon for it.

Soon after my last post I got a real life nuisance call. This one was silent for several seconds. Then there was a faint "ping" and a female voice said , "Goodbye!" And then the call ended. Of course when I dialled 1471 to find out who the caller might be, it said, "The last call was from a network that is unable to transmit numbers."

In comparison my Sims really have it good! I really envy them only getting calls from their friends and, perhaps, would-be friends. I just wish a good-looking townie, angling for a date, would phone me up and ask me to go downtown to visit the clubs!

... If only ...

I've been called by those lousy spam callers on several occasions. Most of them just left me with a dial tone. Others gave me some weird beeping noises. The most annoying, though, were completely silent calls from a variety of different numbers, all targeting my cell phone for whatever reason! They called me every 30 seconds, and I had to chat with a friend over Google Chat just to figure out a way to stop the spam callers. Sims really do have it lucky that irritating spam calls don't occur nearly as often in their world.

I read that university and the hobbies expansion gives you interactions that is a preview of the TS3 interactions like in TS3 you get random sims just walking into your house or phoning you, what you see in TS2 is just a franction of those interactions, they put them in to make interactions with the hobbies and in university more fun and you got the cellphones too.

The same also helps you to make friends it helps your career while before it was a lot harder, even before this though when you logged onto the chat rooms on your laptop you could talk to any local sim or generated sims, your sims just log on and end up meeting a new sim. Now what happens is if a sim feels they have similar interests to your sim they randomly phone them to try and get to know them, it's an interaction they put in there for the 2 sets of interests because before your sims only had 1 set of interests before the hobbies.

As for the spam callers i don't get it that often only when their interests reach to a certain level, i think you need 3 interest points for the subscription service to start phoning up, it's just a way to help you keep your interest level up but the magazines are useless because i haven't see a single one delivered to my sims house so... i wouldn't subscribe. It really creepy though when someone from a secret hobby society just walks in and it's like "how on earth did you even know my sim now has 6 points?".

This only happen to me when I move a new Sims into a neighborhood home lot, first come the " welcome wagon" who by the way get on my last nerves, they have no respect for the Sims home they just walk anywhere they want.
After I get my Sims to get rid of them or say goodbye, then the "telephone ring" with a complete stranger asking my Sims if he or her want to come out with them downtown.

Some nerve of that Sims asking my Sim out when they do not even know each other and have never met. I just let my Sim tell them No so they are be- gone. and other word " hit the road jack"

Ah, so it really is sales calls.

The weird beeping could be junk faxes.

Edit: (And I just realized I double posted, oops).

Those calls, with the pause, are normally from overseas spammers, so as soon as I hear the pause I hang up.

Except those times when the call is coming from...inside the house.

What's the fun in hanging up? I usually try and lure a website out of them and then threaten to sue them.

As a salesperson myself, scams piss me off. The make it harder for anyone else to earn the trust of prospects.

No, don't block the hobby magazine subscriptions! That's free compost for your veggie garden! My gardening Sims (which are about 90% of them) don't even wait for the phone calls. "Oh, it looks like Joe Sim has a 3 in Music and Dance now. Time to get on the phone and order a new hobby magazine...." Then I place a little trash can on the front porch. Any hobby magazines that show up go right to the trash can, and from there they go right to the compost bin. So each magazine ends up saving my Sims 7 to 10 Simoleons on fertilizer, depending on whether or not they're with the Garden Club. What's not to love?

That's amazing Pizzatron! that never occured to me but why do i never actually see the magazines being delivered to my sims? they say it will be delivered once a week but all i get is the daily newspaper :\ not sure why it never shows up but it would sure help if we could compost newspapers too.

You can compost newspapers, I do it all the time and nappies (diapers) Put a couple of deciduous trees and you will have loads of leaves for the compost bin and raking them skills cleaning. My farming couple have a few too many tress as they have been worn into the ground trying to rake, keep the farm going and look after their toddler, but they probably filled close on two compost bins over Autumn.



Oh you're like my husband who strings along the computer scammers, aargh drives me nuts. I took the phone out of his hand last time and said "Goodbye scammers" and hung up.