Caller ID is not working

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 09, 2008 Posts: 1

I've had Vonage for 2 years and in that time my caller ID has never worked. Tech support has been of no help. If I have a single phone (Multiple Phones Tried) plugged directly into my Linksys PAP2 adapter, the problem still exsists. Same of course plugged into my home phone network. Every couple of calls I get No Data or Error instead of the information. It happens regardless of the phone number its coming from. Vonage tells me to send them a list of call dates, times numbers where this happened but they have never been of any help. Wether it comes through or not I can always get the last number by dialing *69.

What can I do, this is getting really old!

Posts: 204 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Dec 04, 2005 Posts: 204

If *69 gets you the last number called and you see the phone numbers in your online account call log, then the cause is likely between your TA device and your telephone set. The Caller ID signal is essentially a 1200 baud modem burst (remeber them?). The typical causes of the Caller ID display not reading the data are noise and timing. An intermittant issue tends to point to a noise cause.

Anything between the TA device and the telephone (including both) could introduce noise. If you have a splitter, try removing it. Check that your telephone cord doesn't have any visable defects in it, such as crushed wire or corroded contacts. If you are using a long cord (greater than 10 feet) try a shorter cord. Try assigning your phone number to the second phone port of your telephone adapter device; you can do this in your online account (Add Ons > Move a Line).

A timing issue is one where the Caller ID signal isn't played when the display device is expecting it. You can't really do much more with this except to try a different Caller ID display device. But as I said before, your symptoms point away from this; it would be expected that it wouldn't work every time if this was the case.

Posts: 15 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 16, 2006 Posts: 15

I had no caller ID problems for three years until a few months ago, when I replaced my various 2.4/5.8GHz analog wireless handsets with a GE DECT 6.0 system with three handsets. Since then I've been seeing "NO DATA" or "INCOMPLETE DATA" on the caller ID on around 25% of my incoming calls. I thought it could be due to my house phone wiring but it was working just fine with my old Uniden phone. I'll have to see about disconnecting my unused jacks and see if that improves things. (My phone wiring topology is best described as "chaotic" - I didn't do it!)