a vent / rant regarding my home phone and ATT

[Kimbear 53]

I have a skype line, $90/yr ($60 for the number and $30 for outgoing calling) and calling Canada is free. I use it all the time to talk to my sweetie. It has a little echo sometimes, but other than that it has worked great. You can buy handheld phones that work with skype too.

Google voice is also a good choice, it will at least filter out the dead air calls. I use it for voicemail, since it attempts to transcribe what the person is saying to text and emails it to me.

Ya google talk is what i used during our K1 process, but it only works if you both on the pc and click call. There is not actual number to call you just click on the name. My family up north is not exactly tech savvy, and they dont even have computers let alone cell phones unless its for work. I need an actual line that they can call in case of an emergency and i need to be able to call them. Same with Davids parents and his grandparents who are in Florida.

The only reason i haven't 100% decided on Vonage or one of those is based on if there is a power failure. What happens then? I have no hone at all. Im thinking our best bet is to try and get a preaid cell, and see if tmobile can give us back our old numbers. Its only been a couple months, and those numbers we never got calls on at all.

[Darnell 8,478]

I actually put in a POTS pbx in my house. When someone calls in, there's a series of menus they can pick from - one of them is 'If you are a creditor or a bill collector press 4' then I have another announcement about 'this number' being relatively new to me, and the prior holder seems a deadbeat. I list the names of the person or people that used to hold the number, and then it's programmed to hang up.

Anyone who wants to call me has already been given the super secret 3 digit code to ring the inside phones, so when I actually hear a ringer, I know it's someone that I will talk to.

It's actually low tech, and works with any VOIP circuit that has a RJ-11 jack for output.

However My house (till she arrives) is an extension of my office - I've gear here, and work from home often.

YMMV, on this 'need'. I needed it, it works well.

[Marilyn. 340]

Ya google talk is what i used during our K1 process, but it only works if you both on the pc and click call. There is not actual number to call you just click on the name. My family up north is not exactly tech savvy, and they dont even have computers let alone cell phones unless its for work. I need an actual line that they can call in case of an emergency and i need to be able to call them. Same with Davids parents and his grandparents who are in Florida.

The only reason i haven't 100% decided on Vonage or one of those is based on if there is a power failure. What happens then? I have no hone at all. Im thinking our best bet is to try and get a preaid cell, and see if tmobile can give us back our old numbers. Its only been a couple months, and those numbers we never got calls on at all.

Google voice and Google talk are two different things.. With Google voice you get an actual phone number. you can block numbers too..

Google Voice helps you customize how you treat callers by giving you the ability to play a custom greeting for your parents or send your chatty neighbor straight to voicemail.

Many users have asked us for controls aimed at people who are NOT in their address book. So today, we’re adding two groups of callers for Google Voice users:

People in your address book: this allows you to customize the experience of all contacts in your address book. This also works by exclusion. For example, you can set a special greeting just for people in your address book, or screen anyone not in your address book.

For anonymous callers: these are callers who do not have a caller ID. They sometimes appear as unknown, or restricted, depending on why the caller’s number is not shown. You can use this group to for example screen any call without a caller ID.

Those two new groups are specific to Google Voice and can be managed from the group tab.

http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/

[Ontarkie 14,140]

We had the same problem, we signed up on the DNC list that took care of them telemarketers. Then we only had to deal with the collectors. We got a cheap answering machine had our names on the machine and after a year less and less collectors called. It also weeded out the prank calls too. We still get the odd collector but they are far and few now, I had one ask me if I knew where they were or how to get hold of them. I just told them I had no clue who they were.

We don't have cell phones and also don't trust vonage to be our only phone.

Now the only ppl were have a problem with are the morons that call saying my computer is infected and they are from Microsoft. I had lots of fun with them. Now I tell them they have a bigger problem because if their getting messages from me their computers must be infected because I don't have a computer. The one girl tried telling me but I confirmed my phone# so they can't be wrong, I said a phone is not a computer and she is pretty dumb if she thinks that I can be sending her computer warnings of a virus when I don't have a computer. She tried to get her supervisor I told I don't need him shes the one with the problem. Then I hung up. Now they hang up on me when I tell them I don't have a computer. I had so much fun its scary.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

I love some of these solutions and wished I had tried them! When I moved here we had calls from collection agencies for the person who had this number before - even though my husband had had the number for a number of years by that time. I stopped picking up the phone if it was an 800 number and if I inadvertently answered the phone and got them, I repeated over and over and over that there was no one here by that name and that their system was really out of date. Eventually I discovered this website: http://whocalled.us/ . It allows you to list who calls you, what number it is from and find others who have received calls from that same number. It also gives you the option to report the number to the FTC. We are also registered on the Do Not Call Registry and I always went to their site and filed an official report about the violators https://complaints.d...ck.aspx?panel=2 .

I never had the courage to do what a friend of mine did. She just kept a loud, piercing emergency/alarm whistle right by the phone and whenever it turned out to be a non-relevant creditor or solicitation she just blew it as loud and as long as she could into the phone and then hung up after giving them an ear-full.

We now use comcast digital phone as well and it seems to work great.

Edited September 1, 2012 by Kathryn41

[VeeNDee 44]

Kimbear, has this gotten any better for you?

I just got a call from some random person at 7am.... ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

I have given out my new American number to family, friends, and others who I need to be able to reach me for wedding plans, etc. A lot of my Canadian friends use Google voice to phone me which shows up as a random number so I don't dare ignore calls. I don't want to change my number because I have finally memorized it and put it in various forms.

But 7am on Christmas morning? REALLY?!?!?! I just want to sleep in!

Doing the nice 'Canadian' thing and saying there is no one by that name and to take my number off their address book has done nothing. They just call back a few days later at some terrible hour from a different number. A different one each time.

Also, my phone company is AT&T too... ha. What a joke.

Another bad part - I have a prepaid unlimited plan on this number which means I only pay per day that I use the phone - and these calls activate the daily charge. AGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So ... how is it going for you now Kimbear? And if it's better, how long did it take?

[Kimbear 53]

No actually it didn't. sigh. i ended up having to take a service that only allows 20 incoming numbers of my choice..every other single one is blocked..only way to fix it for now. i tried turning it off for a couple days and bam..8 am 9pm the idiots still call. they are mostly services related to seniors, so i'm guessing the lat person was a senior. I've given up. i may just cancel the whole phone service and get a prepaid cell for the car for emergency and that's it. its just unreal this stupidity.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

No actually it didn't. sigh. i ended up having to take a service that only allows 20 incoming numbers of my choice..every other single one is blocked..only way to fix it for now. i tried turning it off for a couple days and bam..8 am 9pm the idiots still call. they are mostly services related to seniors, so i'm guessing the lat person was a senior. I've given up. i may just cancel the whole phone service and get a prepaid cell for the car for emergency and that's it. its just unreal this stupidity.

Seriously, use the resources I posted above and report the numbers. They also give you an option to write out your complaint, as well as to see if others are being bothered by these same callers. I find whenever I end up listing a number on these sites, the calls from those numbers stop. Whether it is some official source sending them notices to cease and desist or them finding themselves on the wrong side of licensing agencies or not, I don't know, but the calls stop.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/386158-a-vent-rant-regarding-my-home-phone-and-att/page__view__findpost__p__5653515

Edited December 25, 2012 by Kathryn41

[Rob & Monika 87]

They spoof their numbers on the caller ID's so complaining about it to the FTC doesn't really help. I have a smartphone and I downloaded an app called Call Control. I configured it to only allow calls from my list of contacts and my area code. It says it has blocked 86 calls and only 2 hangup calls got through that had faked local numbers. I set it up to forward them to my Google voice, but Goolge Voice never gets those calls. Some how they call my number several times within a few seconds and it tries to transfer but they never get there. When I test it myself with a blocked number, it goes right to my Google voice mail. It's perfect because if a real person gets blocked, they can at least leave a message, and the robots never get to the voice mail.

[Kimbear 53]

Seriously, use the resources I posted above and report the numbers. They also give you an option to write out your complaint, as well as to see if others are being bothered by these same callers. I find whenever I end up listing a number on these sites, the calls from those numbers stop. Whether it is some official source sending them notices to cease and desist or them finding themselves on the wrong side of licensing agencies or not, I don't know, but the calls stop.

http://www.visajourn...ost__p__5653515

I have reported names and numbers, i even got a reply back from the fcc / ftc etc complaint line and dnc list, basically unless millions of ppl report the same number they can't do anything other than take my complaint in. i still have those replies that were sent to me. I even called the police and made a complaint against the washington number that was coming up as 000-0000, they said they could not do anything either. and i use the who called us site along with a few others like crazy.. right now the sanest thing for me to do is just block everything but the 16 numbers i let through. every one else gets "this caller does not wish to take your call" msg.

Edited December 26, 2012 by Kimbear

[VanessaTony 3,567]

We have Comcast digital phone/Xfinity with our cable and internet package. The service is good, but I tend to get a lot of solicitation calls as well, mostly for the people who used tho own our home. I can't do much about that since its tied to the address, not the number. This house was a foreclosure, and apparently those people owe a lot of people money...

I know its really antisocial and senior citizen of me, but I just don't answer the phone if I don't know the number. If its an 800 number, its ignored. Our voicemail very clearly says who we are, so if its important and for us, they can leave a message. Now when I have a sleeping baby in the house in a few weeks I might start getting annoyed...

On a random note, I'm not sure how people live without cell phones. Maybe I'm a slave to technology...

I bought a home phone a few years ago (Uniden) that i could put on "do not disturb". If you pushed that button the phone would flash (like it does when it's ringing) but it wouldn't actually make noise. I left it with my mum when I immigrated and she loved it when she worked night shift. She'd hop into bed and push the button (base next to her bed) and slept like a baby If I ever got a home phone again I'd get that one again