South Florida Web Marketing Blog

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I hear my phone ring late at night only to find that no one is on the phone. I get a call from 954-652-0645 at 1:35AM – hang up.  It turns out that after a little research search that this turns out to be a local fax harvester. Bascially, this local Broward company has a system that randomly calls phone number waiting for a fax response. If it finds one, it adds that fax number to the list. You are now in the fax spammer list from hell.

I don’t know about you but this needs to be addressed. If anyone knows who this phone number belongs to, please let me know.

I think that every phone number needs to be clearly identified so you know who is calling – if you have caller id.

I think the phone company should stop this abuse of our paid services, but they see it as a business opportunity.

You can try to speak with BellSouth – AT&T – you can contact their customer Support for Annoyance Call Problems

“The AT&T Annoyance Call Bureau provides customer support in the investigation of repetitive/illegal harassing, threatening, or obscene telephone calls or text/email messages received on your AT&T landline or wireless phone.”

“The Annoyance Call Bureau does not investigate telemarketing, collection, or other types of electronically generated calls. These calls are not illegal and there are AT&T Landline, Wireless and Messaging products and services available to assist customers in managing these types of unwanted or annoying phone calls.”

Here are the services AT&T will try to sell you:

Anonymous Call Rejection (Not Applicable to Wireless)
- this was totally useless when I tried this service

Anonymous Call Blocking Anonymous Call Blocking (ACB) intercepts calls from people who have used special blocking features to prevent their name or number from being provided to people they call. When the ACB service is turned on, callers hear a message telling them to hang up, unblock delivery of their phone number, and call again. Your phone will not ring unless the caller removes the block. You can use the service with or without Caller ID.

Call Block *60

Call Block allows you to block calls from up to six specified phone numbers. Just put the numbers on your Call Block list and those callers are prevented from calling you. The number is on your telephone bill.
- Again this was useless when I tried this service

Call Return / Automatic Call Back (*69) (Not Applicable to Wireless)

AT&T Call Return / Automatic Call Back allows you to call back the person that just called you. That means that you can finish your task at hand without missing that important call. Just by dialing *69, you will automatically be connected to the previous caller. It’s a simple and easy way to be connected to your last caller. *69 Call Return / Automatic Call Back will try to place your call for up to 30 minutes if the number is busy. Simply listen for a special ring that repeats twice to let you know your call has been placed. To cancel all *69 Call Return / Automatic Call Back requests, pick up the phone and press *89. *69 Call Return / Automatic Call Back can return some long distance calls. If you use this service to return a long distance call, you’ll be charged a long distance rate and the telephone number will appear on your bill.

This feature is available as subscription or pay-per-use.

Call Trace (*57) (Not Applicable to Wireless)

Call Trace may be an effective and immediate method in which to capture the telephone number last received. Availability of this service and charges for this service varies. Information collected can only be provided to law enforcement.

Caller ID
Caller ID can identify the source of annoying or harassing calls and allow you to screen unwanted calls. You can also order Caller ID with Name and Number Delivery, which displays both the name and number of the caller. Caller ID will assist you in seeing who has called your phone when you were not there. It is also a good way to collect the numbers of people you would like to call in the future.

Privacy Manager (Not Applicable to Wireless)
Privacy Manager provides Caller ID subscribers with the ability to intercept unavailable numbers. Privacy Manager will intercept all unidentified calls before your phone rings and require the caller to identify themselves. If the caller does not identify themselves, the call is terminated and your phone does not ring. If the caller’s number would normally not be displayed (such as “anonymous,” “private,” “out of area,” or “unavailable” on your Caller ID display), Privacy Manager would ask the person to announce their name and to identify themselves. Once the person states their name, your phone will ring and you will have the option of either receiving or rejecting the call. Privacy Manager allows you to identify the caller before you speak to them.

Voice Mail
AT&T Voicemail Service (AT&T VMS) is a centrally located computerized voice messaging service. This service eliminates the need for customer-provided answering machines and allows a customer to receive a message when their phone is in use or when the phone is not answered. Messages can be retrieved from any phone in the world by dialing the Voicemail access number.

For more information on how to use this and other calling features, please visit http://att.com/features.

Unfortunately, AT&T (BellSouth) looks at this as a marketing opportunity to sell you additional useless services instead of contacting the owner of the phone number and placing them on record to cease and desist.

This stuff really pisses me off.