Robo Calls

[Lee Baucum]

We still have a land line that is bundled with our Spectrum cable and internet plan. Our phone has a caller id screen that records all incoming calls and we also have voice mail, provided by Spectrum.

The robo calls have escalated to the point that there would be as many as 15 calls on the caller id every day, when we would get home from work, and each would go to voice mail. Of course, no message... just silence. Delete, delete, delete, delete...

I'm sure just the fact that voice mail picked up, indicted it was a "live" telephone number and that was duly recorded somewhere to be sold for who knows what use.

About a week ago, I logged in to our Spectrum account and figured out a way to not send any calls to voice mail. The very next day, there were only 5 calls recorded on the caller id.

Now, when we get home from work, there are zero calls appearing on the caller id. I'm hoping they (whoever "they" are) are now figuring the number is not a "live" number and they are removing it from their robo dialing system.

Time will tell!

[Jack Stoner]

Sounds like you have blocked all voice mail? If that is the case you will never get a legitimate voice mail message.

We moved back in February and dumped the Spectrum telephone service. Just have cell phone now. Where we moved to provides Spectrum TV and Internet (included in rent).

[Jim Kennedy]

The two best things you can do are to not answer any call if you do not recognize the number or caller, and register all your phone numbers on the National do not call registry. The calls will not stop completely, but you will have a significant reduction in the number of calls received. The voice mails with no message are fishing calls. They are looking for numbers that are answered by a living person. Time is money. No answer is wasted time to a scammer, and numbers not answered get fewer calls. you can register all your phone numbers, cell and land line here.

https://www.donotcall.gov/

[Jerry Overstreet]

I'm registered with the Do Not Call agency, but I can't see it helps at all. Only respectable companies honor that list and that certainly does not apply to robos and scammer computer generated calls.

Some days I'm getting 20 robo calls or more, usually in multiple hits by the same caller.

Because I don't have a large community that I need contact for, I elected to have my phone number white listed.

The service is through my provder AT&T. It only allows calls from 20 numbers, but it blocks out all others. They don't ring through. Precious silence.

I go to my account online ea. day, or as often as I can, and review the missed calls. I can review or search the numbers to see if there are any important calls I've missed.

I just have my VA, Family, and certain other necessary contacts on the white list.

I give my prepaid cell number to a select few other contacts whose numbers I don't have room for on the white list.

Neither do I have voice mail activated on either device. I figure the necessary things can be managed one way or the other or if it's anything of any importance, I'll see it in the call history or through my contact chain.

This may not work for everybody if you have a large calling log, but it works OK for me.

Certain devices and services also offer white listing but I have not any experience with others.

It's a growing problem that I think could be handled better by those that have the ability. It's a damn shame that you can't even use your own phone at your discretion and have a constant barrage of thieves and unwanted interruptions to your day. It's enough to make you want to scream.

I really feel like I've been forced to go white list just to keep my sanity.

Some people can't seem to live without being on the phone constantly, like one of my family members, but I'm not a big phone yakker anyway and I'm not missing it at all.

[Harold Dye]

I am so sick of these things I can't stand it. We get 15-20 each day. Apparently the do not call list has a maximum that you can place on it. When unavailable calls I will say hello and when the person starts to talk I keep saying hello, they finally hang up. Sometimes I will answer Sheriffs department, office John speaking and they hang up. Now when they call I make a noise like someone farted and when they start to talk I do it again and they hang up. I never answer a cell phone call I don't recognize.

[Lee Baucum]

UPDATE: I still have voicemail disabled. I check the caller ID info every day. We now receive 2 or 3 calls a week. I think I'll switch it back on, just to see what happens.

I'm going to drop the landline; but, I am curious to see if the voicemail picking up the calls triggers a flood of robocalls again.

I've had this number since my 16th birthday. I am 68 now. Time to let it go!

~Lee

[Larry Hobson]

Common problem, no real good solution . We have a 3 station cordless phone on our landline. It has a built in call rejection feature . Will hold 50 numbers . When a robo call comes in , you just punch about 3 or 4 numbers to add the last incoming number to the call rejection list. This slows them down some but they are always using more new numbers. Each time one does get through it is easy to add them to the call rejection list with 3 or 4 button pushes. This feature is completely contained in the phone itself and has nothing to do with the phone co. Good luck !

[Lee Baucum]

UPDATE: The robocalls had almost completely stopped...until a couple of weeks ago.

On Saturdays and Sundays there is a constant stream of calls coming in to the landline. On the screen, they all say SPAM RISK.

They ring and ring and ring...thankfully, the ringer is turned off!

I contacted Spectrum earlier this week and changed our triple bundle from TV, INTERNET, PHONE to a double bundle of TV and INTERNET.

We will be saving about $50/month by dropping the landline phone service and updating the bundle.

When I originally moved the landline from AT&T to Spectrum, AT&T was charging about $40/month. Adding the phone to our Spectrum bundle cost us about $10/month.

Oh well....

So long old friend. Mom and Dad gave me my own phone number for my 16th birthday. I've had that number since 1969! Over 50 years.

~Lee

[Jim Shultz]

We kept our landine number by porting it to a MagicJack.
It's somewhere around $40 per YEAR for the service. We like the landline so we can use multiple cordless handsets.

MagicJack has a great call block feature that requires the caller to enter a single digit (randomly prompted by the system to the caller).

Humans can do this, robocallers cannot.

Without the correct number entered We never even hear the ring as the call isn't passed through.

99.9% of robocalls - gone!

Worth the price for piece of mind.

[Brooks Montgomery]

The flip side of the coin is that if everyone answered the calls and engaged them as long as possible, they’d never get any work done and go out of business.

If I have the spare time, I enjoy trying to string them along as long as possible,
“ oh great, my wallet is in my car, I’ll go get it” and then I set the phone down and go back to work. “Hello?” I’ll here them say, and I’ll explain that my wallet must be upstairs, and down goes the phone. After a couple minutes, “Hello?” I’ll hear them say again, and I’ll ask for the pitch all over again whilst the phone has been set down.
Its become fun sport to beat my best time of keeping them strung along. I hope everyone does it to them all day long.

I’ve actually exchanged creative insults back-and-forth (about unmarried mothers , goats, etc) with a guy (I’m assuming he was from a call center in India), and we both started laughing.

[Dale Gray]

I have a land line with Verizon. When I get 1 of those calls, I dont want, I turn on the speaker (after they hang up) and dial "star60" and listen to the instruction. If blocking is turned on, then I dial "pound01Pound" and listen to the instruction and then hang up.

[Dave Magram]

Here's a simple solution to robocalls--use this Special Information Tone that tells the robocall software that your phone is "No Longer In Service".

SIT Tone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrNea2210OE

What I did was record the three-tone SIT, waited one second and said, "Hello, you have reached 321-555-1234. We are not available to take your call, etc."

The robocalls have virtually disappeared from our voicemail, while real people can still leave messages!


- Dave