[roxette]

Blocked calls are on the rise. Different lines are used for making incoming and outgoing calls. Let us discuss on the ways to track them, since the number making the outgoing call is never reached as it is not designed to receive the incoming calls, we are left puzzled.

Some blocked numbers also don't come up in the display screen. I wish we should know the ways to track them accurately.

Let us have a very minute discussion on this topic so that we find the best possible ways to track them.

Regards
Roxette

[chmartinbaby06]

That is a good point Roxette!I get blocked calls on my cell phone and it is hard for me to track the calls because my cell phone company is unable to track it either,we should try to find ways of trying to track this and I would love to find out all the block callers who call my phone!

[cryptowizard]

If you don't know who it is ... don't answer? (lol)

That always seems to work for me. Anyone that is important or needs to get a hold of me will leave a message (again, if it is important). Otherwise they're not worth my time. I usually encourage an email - even for things like talking to my bank. I just prefer written [proof].

Anyway, if you have "Anonymous Call Rejection" package from the telephone company you will not recieve calls from these sorts of people without them first identifying themselves. If they don't identify, then your phone never rings.

As for actually tracing a telephone number:

LAND LINE - It can be done with a *57 with most telephone companies. If successful (sometimes it is not), you will be charged a small fee ($1.00 I think) and a report will be generated that can be used in court at a later date.

FROM A CELL PHONE - Very hard and near impossible (for reasons that are related to the cell technology itself). The best way I've found is via your bill. If you can't get the number off your bill and it says UNAVAILABLE then I just wouldn't answer it. If you can prove someone is calling your cell phone unsolicited they can get in big trouble since they are causing you financial loss (ie. you pay per call) for their ignorance.

[4u.bryan]

I want to share few facts with all you guys, hope it will not be out-of-track. I have the experience of working in a telemarketing company, where the system uses a dialer that picks up customer's phone number from the database and automatically dials the number.

When the customer receives the call, I think, no number is displayed on the screen of CLI or Cell Phone there.

I guess most of the third party debt collectors also use this kind of means to call the consumers.

By registering ourselves in the donotcall.gov like sites, we can stop the telemarketing calls, but I have no idea if it can stop harassing collection calls or not.

Bryan

[roxette]

I am aware about the 'Do not call' list restricting telemarketing calls. But is there any government agency restricting illegal collection calls.

cryptowizard mentioned about "Anonymous Call Rejection" package from the telephone company. This is a good method to prevent such calls. Any more ideas.

[Rhonda28]

The donot call list does not apply to the collectors. I wish it did!! I always do as cryptowizard does-- If I dont know the number or it comes up unknown caller or unavailable- I dont answer it. Then I will check my voice mail to see if a message was left for me.

I use to have caller id intercept, where they would have to announce who they are. It worked for awhile, but then some calls were able to get through. So I cancelled that service.

[twokidtwocat]

My phone has a feature to ring only once if it is an unavailable caller.I will only anwser my phone when the name is available.I dont like sneaky people and if they dont show thier name then they are not worth my time.My daughter use to anwser sometimes, and would them time that she was selling something also, and all she needed was their credit card info and a address and they may have a chance to win a million dollars.It was all in fun,but they hung up real fast.

[cryptowizard]

Yes, most telcos offer a "Distinctive Ring" service. Usually it is part of a package. You can use this to have your phone make a distinctive ring variant on the person who is calling.

With the Anonymous Call Rejection service, your phone will make a [quick] 'ring-ring-pause-ring-ring' noise if someone is trying to authenticate themselves.

Also noteworth (and I've done this before): When someone calls unavailable/blocked whatever - you can find out what the number is still . Try to google it and see what comes up. If you can figure out who it is, call their customer support and tell them that your phone is setup to block those sorts of calls and if they ever want the chance to get a hold of you they'll have to manually unblock their number. They CAN opt to do that.

[chmartinbaby06]

With me working in a telemarketing agency Rhonda sometimes we can get through if we enter the last four digits of the persons phone number and if the company is local they have a better chance of doing it smple fact is I have tried it before if you have call intercept just enter the last four digits of the person telephone number.It only shows up as prority caller on the other persons end and it comes up a out of state number or out of county number.And when you try to call that number back that shows up on your caller I.D. it takes you to this recording!

[Teleport]

I used to have a servive that would not accept any unknown numbers. And the last four digits you were talking about chmartinbaby06, can actually be changed to a different 4 digit pin#.

[chmartinbaby06]

mikey,
I am with you with that one cause how are these people able to harass us the way they do I get blocked calls and unknown callers all the time and sometimes it makes me so mad because these people shouldn't be able to get through and I have a cell phone so they have no way of getting on a plan like home phones have to stop them from calling I wish I did!

[Teleport]

I actually wouldn't mind getting a call from a collector on my cell phone. Only because I have this feature that will record the call up to 30 minutes.

Usually right off the bat, I try to obtain everthing possible about the caller/company so they know I am aware and taking notes, etc.

[chmartinbaby06]

Hi mikey I have that same feature on my phone but the only thing sucks about it is that it doesn't record on a long period of time!I wish it was longer though so that we could record the whole conversation with no interuptions cause then you have to keep recording the whole conversation over and over again

[Teleport]

My phone can record up to 30 minutes. I'm sure I have memo messages saved so the minutes go down.

Luckily I haven't had the reason to record any messages/conversations. I just wanted to throw that option out there, because most people do not they have the feature. I for one, did not know about this feature on my old phone. You could even hear the voicemail messages as it was being left, and answer if you chose to.

Looks like cell phones are getting more and more updated with new features.

-Mike

In spite of telling me them they have the wrong guy and in spite of them promising to take my number off their list, Allied continues to leave messages on my voice mail.

My question: What is the worst case scenario here?
What if simply disregard it as I do any telemarketing call...i.e. ignore the call or simply delete the message? Is there any way that Allied has been known to escalate? I really don't want to spend even a couple of bucks with CEASE and DESIST letters.

[ben]

Another economical and perhaps the legal way is to file complaints at the bureaus and also at the nearest police station. The Trade Unions might also prove helpful in solving your problem.