Ooma Forums

All of my VM messages are sent to my iPhone email address as mp3 files. As I open the email message, it will tell the duration of the message in seconds. If very short (1-4 seconds), I will usually just send it to trash. However, there are some of these messages that are still valuable in that if I can recognize the telephone number, it usually means that the caller is someone I know who is looking to find me. Thus, I can simply call them.

Of course, deleting the short messages from unknown sources doesn't solve the entire problem as they remain on the Ooma device (Hub or Telo). So every so often, I will go online and delete my messages at the voicemail page, or alternatively, mark them all as having been read. Eventually, I will delete messages 100 at a time.

I can't help but wonder why some Ooma subscribers get so many robocalls. I have not enabled community blacklisting and have added very few numbers to my personal blacklist. Yet, I might receive an aggregate of 2-3 calls per day on my three Ooma systems (i.e. 6 numbers) that feed into my iPhone email.

I would recommend that anyone getting lots of robocalls go to donotcall.gov and check to see if your number is still on the Do Not Call list. In the past I have found that when I port my number to a different provider, it gets bumped off the DNC list and I have to resubmit.

Of course, some of the worst robocallers ignore the DNC list, but it does help.

I just wanted to bump this suggestion again. It's frustrating dealing with these mear-zero-length messages with no voice activity. You listen to the message, but it's over immediately after it starts, and Ooma has already saved it by the time you realize it's one of those non-messages. So then you have to deal with it again just to delete it.

It really would be very helpful if Ooma could test the message for voice activity before even entering it in the first place.

With the very helpful changes to the blacklist feature, I think there will be more sending to VM, but the current handling of these non-messages offsets the benefit of doing that. I hope Ooma will seriously look at making this change. I can't think of anything that would improve the overall Ooma experience more.

+1 for me as well.

And I'd really like to have the previously suggested feature to only send SMS alerts for messages longer than a set length:

kburgoyne wrote:Please also add a separate filter for when notifications are sent to each destination. What I'd really like is to toss out 1-2 second vmails. I'd like all longer vmails to be emailed to me, but an SMS only sent for vmails longer than maybe 5 seconds.

Added this to Collection of Blacklist Related Requests.

Seems like Ooma is already trying to do this. If you don't talk for a while after Ooma VM kicks in, Ooma girl would hang up without saving anything after saying "I'm sorry. I did not hear you." Too bad VM is still saved if a caller doesn't talk but hangs up before the Ooma girl hangs up.

oomg wrote:All of my VM messages are sent to my iPhone email address as mp3 files. As I open the email message, it will tell the duration of the message in seconds. If very short (1-4 seconds), I will usually just send it to trash. However, there are some of these messages that are still valuable in that if I can recognize the telephone number, it usually means that the caller is someone I know who is looking to find me. Thus, I can simply call them.

Of course, deleting the short messages from unknown sources doesn't solve the entire problem as they remain on the Ooma device (Hub or Telo). So every so often, I will go online and delete my messages at the voicemail page, or alternatively, mark them all as having been read. Eventually, I will delete messages 100 at a time.

I can't help but wonder why some Ooma subscribers get so many robocalls. I have not enabled community blacklisting and have added very few numbers to my personal blacklist. Yet, I might receive an aggregate of 2-3 calls per day on my three Ooma systems (i.e. 6 numbers) that feed into my iPhone email.

If you're a Gmail user, you can create a filter as shown below. Replace [your phone #] in the From field with your actual Ooma number. If you have a second Ooma number on a private account, you can apply this filter to both by adding OR after the first enty in the From field, copy/paste it again and change the phone number to your private account phone number.




Of course this does nothing for removing the 1-4 second silent VM on your Ooma account, so that will be a welcome improvement.

In regard to someone I know calling me and not leaving a message, but they are trying to reach me? IMHO, if you are trying to reach me and you know me, then you will leave a message or call me direct on my cell phone. Plus the majority of people that know me, also know that I have Ooma and get my voicemail delivered to my email, so they leave a message. If you know me, don't leave a message and don't phone my cell phone, don't send me a text, don't FB message me and don't send me an email, then you don't really need to reach me.

It looks like this problem was last addressed here 6 months ago. Does anyone know if Ooma has addressed this problem yet? To me it's incomprehensible that anyone would consider a 0-2 second message as worth saving.

Rumor has it that well into the second year of this issue, Ooma is still carefully considering the possibility of thinking about perhaps starting to look at the feasibility of assessing the options that might be faced in dealing with this problem. But they are concerned about moving too precipitously. So, probably another year, at least.

It looks like we have an bug 10948 open for this issue. I'll check what the latest status on this is.