Telephone cliches are the worst. If a character isn't meant to pick up the phone and we need to hear the message left, the machine picks up in one or two rings. (Who would set their machine to do this? Not enough time to get to the phone.)

If there is supposed to be tension brought on by the ringing phone, then it will go on ringing and ringing until the person finally picks up. (Do they have no machine? Would a person actually wait that long on the other end?)

And of course there's the stupid fictional 555 numbers...

I got a free Wii from this site!http://www.rewards1.com/index.php?referrer_id=115680