Caller ID Now showing Town and State (Not name)

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2008 Posts: 7

Hey all,
I have one of these SPEAK YOUR CALLER ID phones so the Caller ID is pretty important to me.
Since signing up with Vonage everything has been fine for months, then all of a sudden around March 13th time, all my incoming calls have changed from displaying the name of the caller to displaying their Town and State instead. (Which is pretty much useless for a speaking caller ID)

I've reported the problem to Vonage tech support and gave examples from my incoming calls log on how the caller ID looked before March 13th, and how it looks now when I recieve calls from the same people.
They "Elevated" my problem to a higher tech, I received a standard email waffling on about some calls showing OUT OF AREA etc which was completely irrelevant to my reported problem so I emailed back again with a more detailed explination of my problem.

It's been almost a month now and nothing has been resolved.
Is anyone else seeing this problem?

I really do love the Vonage service but this is a huge issue for me and it's looking like I may have to go back to my cable company for VOIP phone service Sad

Posts: 3 · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:22 am Post subject:

Now that you mention it, I've experienced the same thing. I wonder why that is. Please let us know as soon as you receive a response from Vonage.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2008 Posts: 1

Yup, same thing here within the past month, caller ID stopped showing name and started showing Town and state.

Very strange and annoying.

And yes, got the talking caller ID also which I used to find very handy up to this point.

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2008 Posts: 7

Hmmm So I'm not alone then.

I ended up reporting this error to Vonage for 2 seperate phones lines I'm using.

One reponse email stated:
If the caller id displays a city or state name which corresponds correctly to the NPA-NXX of the customer's phone number , the caller id is operating properly.

The second response email for the second line just stated:
This problem has been resolved.

Clearly it's hasn't and I'm glad to see now that I'm not alone and just going crazy!

I guess my biggest annoyance is the fact that everything was working great up until March 13th. So something somewhere changed on that date!
But so far Vonage don't agree !?

Posts: 67 · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:20 pm Post subject:

This has been a problem since February for me. See following thread.

vonage-forum.com/ftopic21945.html" target="_blank">http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic21945.html

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2008 Posts: 7

Thanks for that link Strongj
You know, I looked all over the place before starting this thread and couldn't find anything (Sheesh)

And I noticed on one of the posts someone suggests it's a local problem!
I know for sure this is not the case, I have contacts in one of our major telephone company's here who works on the main telephony switch, they are not experiancing anything like this here.
So it's Vonage specific.

Did you ever get it resolved or is this still ongoing for you too?

Posts: 67 · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:25 pm Post subject:

Nope, not resolved and continues to be a problem for everyone. Here's another thread on the same topic:

vonage-forum.com/ftopic22155.html" target="_blank">http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic22155.html

Yep, Vonage specific.

Posts: 85 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 29, 2008 Posts: 85

I'm new to Vonage but I don't have this problem. I can see the
name and numbers of almost everyone who called me. (same as
what I used see when I was using landline)

I just bought a new Panasoinc DECT 6.0 multihandset cordless
phone. (the one that just came out two weeks ago, in black)
It has Talking Caller ID. It just says whatever name is on the
caller ID.

However, it also has Ringer ID and phonebook list. For example,
I have my grandmother in the phone book. I used "granny"
in the phone book. When she calls my Vonage number, my
Panasonic cordless phone says "call from granny" and rings
in a special melody.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject:

Right, that's the key. Most of the people who call me are in my address book already, so Caller ID with name is something I don't even realize is broken if it breaks (as it obviously has, given the subject of this thread).

As long as the number comes through, I'm good. (grin)

Having said that, I hope they get it fixed soon, it's a nice feature if you use it a lot. On the other hand, for people who call you frequently, if you have Talking Caller ID, chances are you also have an address book - enter the numbers and names into your address book. It obviously won't fix ALL of your calls, and it doesn't get Vonage "off the hook" for fixing it, but if not having talking caller ID or caller ID with name is a big problem, and the same people tend to call you frequently...

Posts: 14 · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:35 am Post subject: It might be VeriSign...

An email reply from an Advanced Operations Tier 2 tech says that Vonage changed in February to using a Sonus gateway for some of its calls, and that Sonus uses the VeriSign CNAM database to get the Caller ID Name. It would appear that the VeriSign database lacks a lot of real-name information that the previous (whoever it was...) CNAM database had. Unlike Cox, which is willing to go in and manually update the NAM field in the database they use (its not VeriSign) if it was not updated correctly when an update was received in the past from the carrier that the number belongs to, the Vonage techs state they will not manually update the Verisgn database (possible for Verisign CNAM database customers to do), or instruct Sonus to do so. Maybe Vonage will dump Sonus? I hope so. I have yet to see anything that VeriSign can do competently.