Anonymous Call Rejection / Screening not working

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 05, 2007 Posts: 8

I called the Vonage 1-800# directly and spoke with a sales rep.

I told him that I have a service through AT&T that effectivley screens out telemarketers and solicitors by blocking anonymous/private callers. He told me that Vonage had the same feature.

I have switched to Vonage and now my phone is ringing 3-4 times a night with automated telemarketers. Sad

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:29 am Post subject:

Vonage does not, at least officially, have the same feature unless they have added it very recently. A good number of people on the forum have been asking for it for a very long time.

However, there have been rumors that, on certain devices, you can probably get it enabled. Some of the Vonage adapters DO support ACR (Anonymous Call Rejection), and if you call a couple of times you may find a rep who can turn it on for you, IF your device supports it.

In my case, since my number was issued by Vonage and has never been in any phone books, I have yet to get a single telemarketer call since July of 2005. Well, longer than that, actually, since I had a cell phone as my primary home telephone line for two years prior to that.

But I can understand how telemarketer calls can be annoying. I remember those days, and not at all fondly.

Posts: 233 · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:41 am Post subject:

On a light note, get something that sounds like a gun and sit it by the phone. When a telemarketer calls ask them to hold on a second. The shout, "I told you if I get one more phone call I would take care of you." Produce the sound, fire the blank, whatever. They will hang up before you get back to the phone.

Seriously, NateHoy is right. It is a feature we all want but it hasn't bubbled to the top. I'm not sure why. I too have a generic Vonage number so I don't get telemarketers. But I have considered a device from Privacy Corps. I hadn't bought it yet so I can't testify. I still like the value in Vonage. Going on 2 years and had no outages. My old Verizon line was done four days at a time. That bought my loyalty.

Posts: 533 · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 10:53 am Post subject:

If you do get Vonage to enable ACR on your phone, it's complete rubbish anyway. It'll only block numbers specifically with a CID of "Anonymous", nothing else.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:04 am Post subject:

galion wrote:

...I have considered a device from Privacy Corps. I hadn't bought it yet so I can't testify...

I've never used such a device, but there is one problem with it (not a fatal flaw, but not something you can easily work around, either)...

Devices like that depend on caller ID data, of course. Caller ID data is sent from Vonage between the first and second rings. That means that, while Anonymous/unwanted calls will be rejected if you have one of those gadgets set up right, the calls will ring at least once before rejection.

Personally, if my phone number ever got "corrupted" (given out to marketing lists), I'd get a virtual number from Vonage, give out that number to people I want calling me, give people a few weeks to get used to the new number, then have the old primary number killed off and the "new" Virtual number changed over to my primary. Make the calls go away completely. Wink

Vonage-assigned numbers rule, because they don't appear in phone books. I like that, and I hope Vonage NEVER tries to fix outbound caller ID with name, because that means listing my name and phone number in the public address book databases, which means quiet suppers at home are a thing of the past.

Posts: 62 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 04, 2006 Posts: 62

When I got my second line with Vonage, they gave me a number that had been in use by another person only a couple of days before. They hadn't even cleaned out the voicemail box. Judging by the voicemail, this person had left town in a hurry. I was getting bombarded by calls for him as well.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 1:21 pm Post subject:

I had that happen on a landline that was issued to me in New Hampshire once - the line was previously owned by a company that went out of business suddenly, and I was getting collection calls all hours of the day and night, weekends, etc. Took MONTHS to get people to stop calling me.

The phone company offered to change my number, but wanted a $75 fee to disconnect the old number and another $50 to establish the new one. At least with Vonage I can do the same thing for $10 or so. Wink

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 05, 2007 Posts: 8

Great, the Vonage sales rep lied to me.

First, they spelled my login obviously wrong when i signed up over the phone.

Second, a customer service rep told me I could not change it. I had to request his supervisor to get it changes.

Third, my caller ID is broken and reporting incorrectly. 2 service calls to Vonage and 2 emails with failed attempts at fixing it.

Fourth, I can barely understand the Vonage customer service reps.

Fifth, the Vonage sales rep lied to me about offering the same service and now I'm getting bombarded by telemarketers.

I've had the same phone number for 15 years. I'm not going to change it. AT&T did a excellent job of filtering out the unwanted calls.

I'm going to cancel. They better not try to charge me $40 to cancel either. It's completely their fault that i'm cancelling.

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 29, 2005 Posts: 14

There is another alternative, register your phone number in do-not-call list.

https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 05, 2007 Posts: 8

S_K wrote:

There is another alternative, register your phone number in do-not-call list.

https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx

I already have.

That link even had a way to verify it:

Your phone number with the last four digits #### registered in the National Do Not Call Registry on 7/18/2003.
Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date. Your registration will (or did) expire on 12/21/2009.