Unfortunately I have to answer all calls because it could be someone wanting to rent one of the gites. However, there are some numbers I recognise as being nuisance calls so they are cheerfully ignored!
We get lots of them. They have started to creep into our mobiles as well. As for Skype, well I have lots of women and the very occasional man who wish to make my acquaintance who I decline using the scam and nuisance options when declining. On an average day I have a couple of hundred spams on email across my accounts, one in particular. They are a nuisance and some of them like recent calls from 'EDF' about sending an engineer to check our line so that they can advise us on reducing power whilst the Feedback operative was with us reading our metre almost seem convincing until they cannot deal with the 'box' of trick questions we have. In this case proposing going into an EDF office that no longer exists for several years to talk about it over the desk, to which we had an answer that that office does not deal with these issues. It is creating a problem of sorting the real calls out. The problem with answering machines is that a lot of people will not leave messages anyway, get confused by instructions on which key to press so fluff it or cannot cope as soon as they hear a language they cannot understand. There is no solution that is watertight and is thus very frustrating, however if anybody has an idea that actually works, say so.
Do like my son. Don't bother with a landline phone and just use Skype. He has no nuisance calls and uses his mobile when necessary.