Call Blocking Devices

What's all the doom and gloom?  I've had a "Person-to-Person P2P101 call blocker for years and it still works fine.

Resident 47: I agree that using the TCPA and FDCPA is appropriate, but telemarketers have gone to such great lengths to disguise their identities, I've concluded that complaining to the FTC and my state's attorney general is like writing to Santa Claus.

In the past decade, I have successfully sued numerous telemarketers and a handful of debt collectors, obtaining thousands of dollars in settlements and a judgment for $6500 (which I was ultimately able to collect on).  Unfortunately, telemarketers have become increasingly sneaky and better at filtering potential problems like me by stonewalling or providing a fictitious identification for their employer.  To discover the true identities of the last two I went after, (an alarm service and a handyman service), I had to make an appointment for them to send a rep to my house with a "contract."  Maybe they're now targeting me with robocalls and hang-ups out of spite.  The debt collectors, who used to call me looking for every tom, dick, and harry that I have never heard of, don't call as frequently as they once did, and they're generally more prone to obeying the law (by not calling anymore after I tell them they have the wrong number).  

My chief problem now is the anonymous (and fictitious caller i.d.) robocalls. That's why I started this thread in search of an electronic defense.  I may just have to break down and pay for a PBX system.  I've been communicating with a seller of a Trivox II, but I'm suspicious of products that aren't sold through a known retailer.  I wish I could do a term-search on this website to locate more product reviews.

It is not a matter of "doom and gloom" to be reminded that technology has limits and those limitations can increase as a particular tool ages and circumstances change around that tool. The design of the handheld rip saw has been nearly constant for decades, mainly because the nature of the lumber it cuts has also changed little. The number of discontinued and outmoded electronic gadgets for phone call management outnumber the ones which remain broadly relevant because the both the hardware and our uses for a phone network have changed many times.

Another factor driving change is the active interest taken by industries which rely on call centers to circumvent or defeat devices aimed at mitigating and repelling their efforts to disturb us. Some of those callers dance every day on the borders of legal conduct, while others taunt us from fully illegal terrain. They will test the fences every day of every week until they find a weakness, which eventually prompts creation of another replacement device. Part of my point has been to break that cycle when possible by halting the conduct, not merely muffling the noise.

I'll never ask you or anyone else to stop doing what works for you, only place emphasis on the phrase "works for YOU". Some technological measures can be very clever and effective when used thoughtfully, but no single tool fixes all troubles.


"A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist." -- paraphrased from "Yes, Prime Minister"

} complaining ... is like writing to Santa Claus

For the record I've never advocated stopping at complaints to governmental desks unless there are truly no other options. The two mentioned Acts grant private right of action. I forget at times that many people miss that implication, that the "action" must be their own if those laws are to be properly invoked.

It rather sounds like your approach tracks close to my own, which is a sort of flowchart of possible responses to nuisance callers. I start with the most direct countermeasures, and if the pests cannot be found or litigation is impractical, I keep to indirect measures, meaning the official complaints and informal comments on a site like this, and some form of call blocking may be involved.

Your laudably hands-on response to the most obstinate categories of junk sales callers has been echoed in the "Stop Tom" thread and is probably the sort of thing which needs to happen more often, which in itself is a shame. Dragging Telemarketing Sales Rule and TCPA compliance from those self-entitled marketers was never meant to be so difficult or potentially exhausting. We aren't supposed to be hunting all year for the right "Call Killer v3.6" and sending Certified Mail every other week and filing lawsuits every season. I'm all for people cleaning their own messes, but the FTC has at least seen this past week that it needs to work harder to meet us partway in our defense.

Agency Announces Robocall Summit to be Held October 18 in Washington, DC
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/07/robocall.shtm

} term-search ... more product reviews

I'm not sure what's stopping you, apart from the fact that 800Notes isn't really set up for product evaluation, and I'm not aware of much useful device discussion anyway, apart from Lone Stranger's voice of experience. I suspect you might save some money or find other options if you toss his handle in your search runs. Searching within a domain name is trivial for StartPage and "the Google". I often get better and/or quicker results than through a site's internal search function to boot. They each have an appropriate input field under Advanced mode if you haven't been properly introduced to the "site:" or "host:" modifier.

For people with landlines Phone Tray Free is still a good option IMO.

Resident 47 - Thank you!  You've taught me something new.  I was unaware of the "within domain" search feature on the advanced tab of StartPage.  

If I end up buying one of those call screening devices, I'll post my results on this site.  I really like this site - especially the fact that I'm not asked for a bunch of personal information with a required registration.

As someone who has designed more than a few bits of industrial, scientific, and military electronic gear, I can tell you that $100 does not seem unreasonable for this sort of device, especially given that this is a niche market. If you were able to manufacture and market in large enough quantities (preferably in China or similar "slave labor" markets) you could probably get the cost down, but remember that it is not enough to look at cost of parts and labor. You also have to consider marketing, packaging, cost of capital, regulatory approvals, warranty reserves, insurance, etc., etc.,.

Niche manufacturers making this sort of gadget go out of business more often than not, simply because the economic realities do not support the product.

If you want free solutions, use Google Voice, PIAF, or switch to a good VOIP provider for your phone service.

Take a look at this recent thread: <https://800notes.com/forum/ta-5d9254ccb04a7bb ... 723293869263738> It will give you a little insight into the DIY options - the hardware cost alone for such a roll your own solution is $50 at bare minimum. Making one from scratch, doing your own PCB, using a minimal processor and a spartan interface would probably cost you at least $30 in parts by the time you got it in a simple case,

Several years ago I considered purchasing a small company manufacturing a very clever CNC control device. As I got into the details of the business I quickly realized that the devices were not profitable at the current price, and that the market would likely not bear a higher price. No wonder the firm was up for sale. Eventually, they were unable to find a buyer, and the business closed.

In any case, no conspiracies are needed. I have people come to me with "great ideas" all the time. But there is no shortage of "great ideas", including telephone gadgets. There is a shortage of customers willing to pay enough for these great ideas to make them profitable as your balking at a modest $100 price tag demonstrates. No one is getting rich off of call blockers, I promise you, and no one is trying to drive them out of existence either. After all, you can simply record an "out of service" message on your answering machine and achieve pretty much the same effect.

Google Voice is free and will do exactly what you want, with only a modest configuration effort.

PBX in a Flash is free (although you will have to set it up on a Linux machine, virtual or real) and while pretty technical, will do everything you want and more.

Those are the two most powerful free solutions I have experience with, although NCID looks intriguing.

So the question becomes, do you just want to vitch about the problem, and promote paranoia about secret telephonic cabals, or do you want to take the simple steps needed to get some relief?  If it is relief you want, look here:

<voice.google.com>
<http://pbxinaflash.net/>
<http://ncid.sourceforge.net/>

There are some threads on here discussing overbilling/zombie account problems with the Majic Jack folks, so be careful.  $20 is cheap, but free is cheaper.

Free services offer unlimited blocking capabilities while the paid ones can block only upto 10 or 20 phone numbers. Whats wrong with this picture?

Well, the paid ones come from your telco, and they still haven't gotten past their monopolistic, bureaucratic, way of viewing the world.

Years ago a good friend of mine landed a really nice job with AT&T. He was always a "go getter", and when a very large customer had an urgent need, he made the effort to expedite things for them. A couple of days later he was called in to his bosses office and chewed out. He was told, "You don't seem to understand the way things are done here. Relax, go play some golf or hang out at home for a couple of days. The customer will still be there when you get back. You're working too hard."

The person saying this was fairly high up in the food chain. Needless to say, my friend took a job elsewhere. As he put it, "I couldn't stand collecting a paycheck for doing nothing."

Never assign to guile and conspiracy that which can be explained by sloth and stupidity,

Monopoly and bureaucracy are two headaches that the average man has to deal with. Good thing that there are enough alternatives out there. There are many ways to fix one problem, and people should never feel helpless when it comes to dealing with it.

What gets me is there is plenty of hardware out there that is technically capable of doing what we want.  Any cordless phone with a built-in answering machine and caller ID is adequate hardware to do the job.  The trouble is, the companies that make these machines don't have the programmers put software on them that can take care of junk calls as well as they could.

For example, my Panasonic cordless phone system has a call block feature.  The problem is, it only blocks a maximum of 20 numbers.  The phone book feature can store far more numbers, so why did they limit the block list to only 20?  20 is not nearly enough with all the spammers rotating through numbers, and also the phone doesn't allow any wildcard blocks (i.e. entire area codes or exchanges).  It also won't block "Out of Area" calls which is important for any anti-spam solution.  So close, and yet so far.

Many other brands of cordless phones/answering machines have no block feature at all.  With all the spam calls these days from scammers who blatantly ignore the Do Not Call list, you'd think a comprehensive call blocking feature would be something that would make a product fly off the shelves.

Someone needs to develop an answering machine running open source software that can be customized by end user/developers to add features.  Sort of like a "Linux phone".  Then we could add any features we need to keep ahead of the spammers.

I am not that good with programming or hardware but I don't think the panasonic phone chip can block more than 20 numbers? Phone companies have huge systems that can block unlimited numbers but they aren't setting it up.

What I'm saying is Panasonic could have programmed their "chip" (it's a microprocessor or microcontroller running software) to allow more than 20 blocked numbers.  Just make it part of the 100+ number phone book memory/caller ID memory and just add a 1-bit "block" flag there.  The chip has the capacity, it just needs to be coded appropriately.

Adding the ability to block "Out of Area" and entire prefixes/area codes is also a simple code change.