I remember ringbacks something like this;<p>One day several years ago I noticed the number of calls I was getting was going down. Then one day a friend texted me asking what was wrong with my phone, I asked what he meant and he said it had stopped ringing when ever he called me and all it did was play music now. He was rather confused, and I was just as confused but skeptical too, I requested no change in service. I asked him to come over to demonstrate and sure enough there was a song that would play whenever someone called me. I figure most people thought that meant some kind of error and hung up, most of the time before it hit my phone.<p>I called my carrier and angrily complained and the poor woman tried to pass this off as a service, but I was having none of it. I demanded that they disable it immediately and I apologized to friends and family who were confused by it. Nearly switched carriers over it as well, this is preposterous IMO and was executed with very little forethought.<p>Shortly afterwards, ringbacks disappeared entirely and I was all the happier for it. I get the sense there are multiple lessons to take from that anecdote.