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I remember ringbacks something like this;

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.

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.

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.