Date Gone Wrong: An App To Get Out Of The Uncomfortable Situation

Be it through the conventional method of a friend setting it up, or the modern swipe of Tinder, many of us have been on a first date that didn’t go well. And for just those situations, people often tell a friend to call them a few minutes into the date, giving them a polite excuse to leave.

But the friend could be busy or forgetful, or their phone battery could die. They could also be more inquisitive about your dating life than you might like, and so on. Not really an ideal scenario. So what is one to do?

Enter PhonyCall.

Developed by Evegny Cherpak, it is an app that allows users to receive automated calls at times of their choosing. Each call lasts up to two minutes, enough time to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse if you need one. The calls come from a fixed number, letting users saving it as a customized name of their choice, one that would fit with their excuse of choice.

Cherpak told International Business Times his reason to develop PhonyCall: “I have been going on quite a few blind dates lately using Tinder, and even though a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes those thousand words are all lies. This leads me to ask friends to give me a call 5 or 10 minutes after I went into the date, to give me an excuse to bail out if needed. Eventually I got tired of explaining, asking, and waiting for the call to arrive.”

How exactly to use the app? Download it from the App Store, save the incoming number as a contact (you can customize it with its own picture and ringtone), enter your own number where you will receive the rescue call, put in a verification code (that the app will send to your device) to confirm your number and you are all set up. Next, depending on how often you think you will use the app, you need to purchase calling bundles which start at 99 cents for two calls and go up to $4.99 for 20 calls. Then you set the time when you want your phone to ring, and you are good for your date.

Currently, the app, released Tuesday, is only available for iOS, but Cherpak plans to launch an Android version in a few months. Prodded by IBT, he said he will also consider introducing the option of pre-scheduling multiple calls in an update.

Cherpak is an independent app maker from Israel who has worked for software companies in the past as an IOS developer. Like PhonyCall, he chooses what apps to make based on his needs.