Add Call Screening or Call Block Feature

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 28, 2007 Posts: 4

When will Vonage be adding call screening or call blocking? Their competitor Comcast and Clearwire has this feature with VoIP services. This feature will allow the customer to add phone numbers to block when they get those calls from companies claiming to have a prior working relationship so they are entitled to call or those who call to do a survey they claim will only take a few minutes. I know there is a demand for this type of feature.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2008 Posts: 2

It seems like Vonage don't care about this need of the customer. I am looking for this answer as well.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: May 05, 2006 Posts: 1

I would really like to have this feature as well. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 09, 2006 Posts: 3

Same here. Does anyone know what Vonage's objection might be to providing this service? Is it a cost issue? Technology issue? Seems like it would be easy to add this feature and people would line up to get it.

L10Flyer

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 02, 2008 Posts: 1

I left Verizon for vonage and i have been 90% happy
but Verizon had this cool service called IOBI that I paid $30 month for.
I don't get why Vonage is walking away from this.

Perhaps they agreed not to implement these features to keep other network providers from suing them.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 07, 2008 Posts: 1

I don't get this ... why cannot Vonage offer this feature ?

Their competition (PhonePower, VoIP.com) both offer this feature. Seems to be a common feature offered these days ...

Thoughts anyone ?

eb

Posts: 198 · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:11 pm Post subject:

They probably have to come up with a different way of doing that. I am sure they don't want anymore copyright and software infringement lawsuits.

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 16, 2005 Posts: 12

I took the 15 day demo of Vonalink Screenpop (www.vonalink.com), as we were getting 10 calls a day from some Democratic National Committee collection creeps, who claim that the no-call list doesn't apply to them, as they are not-for-profit...

Hardware:
cable modem--->wrt54g, linksys 'dumb' 4 port hub, linksys ATA.

Well documented software, requires a hub(non-switched) into which is plugged both the ATA and the PC running the Screenpop software. (I had an old 4 port Linksys hub hanging around)

Auto-discovery for the Vonage number. sniffs out all vonage activity, both in and out, producing a clean call log. Screen pop of caller-id, number as the phone rings.

ONE CLICK call block ! Sends a disconnect to the blocked caller on the 1st ring. Cool ... GOODBYE DNC !@!!
Runs 2 apps - 1 is a service that performs the sniffing to the ata, the other is the vonalink executable. Very small utilization.

$29 after the trail period;
Having said all this, it would be nice if Vonage would provide selective call blocking for nothing...
S

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 26, 2008 Posts: 1

Just to keep this on Vonage's RADAR! I get "spam" calls that I cannot block, and it's not a trivial or "annoyance" problem. I often work overseas, and I bring my Vonage box. That means I get 3am automated calls, and I can't block them!

Something's really wrong when they don't have this basic feature to block spammers. Maybe we should have a machine spam-call them at night, on their own system? Then they'd understand?

Nor do we have a response from anyone from Vonage. Another big mistake!

Posts: 26 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 26

It's painfully obvious that somewhere in Vonage's past, the management decided not to offer this for whatever reason or we'd have it already. It's been a request since at least 2003, with competing services offering call filtering & ACR around that time as well. I imagine with the economy now headed downhill they're going to keep an eye on their cash burn rate and cut expenses where they can, which isn't going to help get these features out in any case.

While I do think posting here helps, if call filtering is that important to you I think you'd be better served by signing up and porting to VoicePulse or any of the dozen others that offer this, rather than waiting. I left in 2005 after 3 years of using Vonage. I got into asterisk at that time (overkill for 99.99% of people I know, but the call control possibilities are limitless), and ported/canceled Vonage for a sip friendly provider and haven't looked back.