Ooma Forums

Thanks, niknak. I've been playing around with Google Voice and have found it to be pretty useful.

I set up my ooma and GV this morning to make sure that my suggestion would work. I have a landline that is not blocked so I dialed *67 then my ooma number. I received the recording and ooma would not pass the call. I then called my GV account that I had configured to send my GV number - not the caller's number - when forwarding a call. The call went through to ooma just fine.

I haven't heard back from the OP but now that we know it works it might be a solution for others having a similar problem.

I think I am going to try the GV option. Thanks everyone for helping out. As stated it isnt so much an ooma problem but my work's system. I would say that it would be a nice feature for people calling into an ooma system to be able to either just press a 1 or a 2 to unblock or enter their number to complete the call instead of having to hang up and call back using *82 Just a thought if there are any ooma techs out there listening. Thanks again everyone. PS Just ported my number and everything works great!!!!!!

Just a side point that may be an issue for some folks. I work for a large police department in Colorado. I went and spoke to the dispatch supervisor about my issue since I am on call occasionally and wanted to know if they would have the same issue of not being able to get ahold of me because of the dialing 9 first issue. The dispatch supervisor said all Police dispatch phones including 911 lines are blocked so they would not have the ability to call me at my ooma number. I asked if I called 911 and then for some reason was disconnected during the call the police department would have no way to call my ooma number back. He said they have had a few cases where the number would not accept a blocked caller id but gave the option to unblock it or put in the ten digit number calling from and were able to call the individual back.

Im not sure how many police agencies around are like this one but this could be a safety concern for some people. For those who have a concern it would probably be best to turn off anonymous call block until something can be added or a work around can be found.

I believe ooma is using E911 (enhanced)
In this case when you call 911 the address you first registered with ooma shows up on the dispatcher's screen. At least the PD would know the location to respond to, even if a call was cut off

Quicksprj wrote:I think I am going to try the GV option. Thanks everyone for helping out. As stated it isnt so much an ooma problem but my work's system. I would say that it would be a nice feature for people calling into an ooma system to be able to either just press a 1 or a 2 to unblock or enter their number to complete the call instead of having to hang up and call back using *82 Just a thought if there are any ooma techs out there listening. Thanks again everyone. PS Just ported my number and everything works great!!!!!!

I have no idea if it would be technically possible for Ooma to get the caller id that was blocked to allow them to pass it unblocked after the caller presses a button. But allowing the caller to enter a 10 digit phone number would allow the caller to enter a spoofed number i.e. a number that they're not really calling from.