Scenario:

Someone provides you a cell or land-line phone # to call for either business or other reasons. It's not a person or number personally known to you. Generallly, since there usually isn't printed phone directories of cell phones, the cell phone numbers are most often exchanged by word-of-mouth....subject to discrepancies. You call what you think is the correct personal or business number & get the computer generated generic voice greeting of....."you have reached 815-228-0000....please leave a message....". Since you don't know that person or number, you want to certainly leave some details as to why you're calling, hoping for a return call. But, it also strikes you that perhaps this is the totally  wrong number, you're making an idiot of yourself telling someone indifferent to the situation why you'd like to hear from them or why exactly you're calling, even though you're also a stranger to them, and that you are wasting your entire time & if you never hear from that person you want to contact, it may be because:

1. That is not their phone #.

2. That person is no longer alive.

3. That is in fact the correct phone # for the person you do want to contact, but they have no interest in returning your call.

4. They claim to "never use that phone" and suggest it was the wrong number to have been chosen by you.

5. They claim to have "never had time to set up" the voicemail on the phone they got 5 years ago.

My point is, I think it's nice when that unfamiliar phone number initially answers with, "hi, this is Ron Lukow, please leave a message & I'll call back....". Or, "this is the Jones residence, please leave a message......". Now, at least you're confident you left the message in the right spot & not on some drug dealers phone in the "hood", unless that actually was your target. I think it's fairly easy to generate personal phone greetings these days. 30 yrs ago our answering machines came with a microphone to record the greeting on the little mini-cassette. It's easier now to record/edit greetings....I think.

Am I wrong in my personal concept of correct style phone greetings?