Blacklisting is USELESS!

[Telo_BK]

I have made the identical request before, and I see two recent requests for the same thing. How long will Ooma solicit feature requests only to ignore them even when they come for OVER SIX YEARS from multiple subscribers? Is this forum a complete waste of time? I'd like to see the names of five feature requests that have actually been implemented based on posts in this forum.

Yesterday, I got seven (7!) calls from "Dir Assist OR", "Dir Assist TX", "Dir Assist CA", "Dir Assist NY", a couple of them twice. They all had different numbers. I have numbers blacklisted, lots of them. But unless I blacklist ALL possible numbers, I will still get these garbage calls. Why can AT&T and Verizon manage this? I get no calls like this on those numbers. Never have. And I didn't with COX, before I switched to Ooma. As soon as I changed the calls started coming. Ooma's obviously not doing something right.

People have been requesting both blacklisting by name, and that Ooma stop routing invalid numbers for over six years.

So I have my head buried in writing an algorithm while I wait for an important call. Or my head and hands are busy with loading a PCB and soldering it, or making a prototype. Then the phone rings and I stop what I am doing to give attention to the phone and see that the caller ID says something like "V207213947123". I give them the hangup treatment, and return to work. This scenario plays out 10-12 times in a day, M-F! On the weekends not so many junk calls come in.

I am going to keep posting messages with subjects like this so that would be subscribers will think twice before signing up with Ooma until they start to pay more attention to the needs of their CUSTOMERS. Ooma can and shoud do better. We've certainly been patient with them. Now they're trying to sell their wares and problems to offices.

[lbmofo]

Far from useless. I don't experience the same issues you do. People not getting spam calls have nothing to do with carriers.
Thread topic should read Ooma Blacklist is great but could be even better with caller id name wildcard blocking.

[Telo_BK]

Good for you Ibmofo. How does that help the rest of us who do have people calling and spoofing their numbers and who find blacklisting useless? Why can't Ooma do what other carriers are doing to prevent such calls from going through? How about just fixing the blacklisting so it's useful. The fact is that the subscribers of the carriers I have mentioned do not get these calls, and if they do they are very rare.Numerous people have suggested Blacklisting by displayed name. There's a reason for that even if you're not affected.

Ibmofo- I'd like to know whether you receive any sort of consideration, whether money, equipment, training, or other products or services (in-kind consideration) from Ooma. You seem to know who works in management and sales, and I find that odd. When I made my post I did so fully expecting a post from you of the tenor of the one you made. You come across as an Ooma apologist, even an evangelist, and someone with inside knowledge. You seem to lack the objectivity of a paying customer. Why is that?

Ibmofo- you have more expertise than most of the people in tech support (even tier two and three). There's nothing personal here. I appreciate that you have helped MANY MANY people with issues they have with Ooma. I think that is great. I would encourage you to start a thread with any topic you choose. The chosen topic for this thread fully describes the issue.

[lbmofo]

I am objective in this regard: I am critical of your title "blacklist useless"
If true, turn your blacklist off to see if your title is true.
I am neither for or against your suggestion of caller id name wildcard.

[Telo_BK]

Noted: Ibmofo didn't answer my questions (see above) about his/her relationship with Ooma.

Noted: Blacklisting might be effective a very small percentage of the time. I guess that technically means (in a way that would satisfy a pedantic person) that it isn't useless. Based on the 10-12 spoofed calls I receive on a typical weekday, blacklisting is merely virtually useless.

I will post this topci periodically until Ooma makes it possible to blacklist by name with wildcards ("?" and "*", for character or substring matching, respectively). Regular expression matching would be fine too.

[Iraisok]

Yesterday, I got seven (7!) calls from "Dir Assist OR", "Dir Assist TX", "Dir Assist CA", "Dir Assist NY", a couple of them twice. They all had different numbers. I have numbers blacklisted, lots of them. But unless I blacklist ALL possible numbers, I will still get these garbage calls.

Hi,

1. I too have requested the ability to block Caller I.D. and be able to use a wildcard.
2. I have requested that of both Ooma and Nomorobo.
3. Enter numbers directly into Nomorobo and not in your Personal Blacklist. That would help you and everyone using Nomorobo. I've been helping YOU ever since Nomorobo was an option at Ooma. We do what we can.
4. I left AT&T because they did not offer simultaneous ring that is a required to subscribe to Nomorobo. Nomorobo integration to Ooma does not require us to do anymore than check the box.
5. I now receive very few telemarketer calls, maybe one call every few days and NEVER the same number twice.

Ira

[lbmofo]

Telo_BK, I am not associated with Ooma in anyway. Ooma doesn't pay me for participating in this forum. I just happen to like Ooma and been a happy customer since 2010. Converted many friends and family to use Ooma over the years.

With that said, I don't get your logic for asking these questions. Think about this....just because I don't agree with you or I defend Ooma on certain topics, I must be paid by Ooma or be an Ooma employee? Doesn't make sense to me. That would be like me asking you if you are sent by an Ooma competitor to rock the boat here since you are so critical of Ooma (case in point, the title of this thread of yours); which is entirely possible. But instead I focus on the topic at hand.

Going back to your "blacklist useless" contention, I again call major BS on that.

Ooma allows 256 entries in personal blacklist. Wildcard capability to boot.

What others offer:

Comcast 12
AT&T Uverse 20
Verizon FiOS 6 or 12
NetTalk 10
Vonage 25
Phonepower 50

If you ask me, others can't even compare to Ooma's blacklist.

To be fair, a member did tell us about how VoIPo has no limit on blacklist entries and how they had full wildcard blacklist (callerid number only - 10 digit masking). Then again that forum member did leave VoIPo and come to Ooma for some reason.

I will say what I've been saying for a while now. A responsible company like Ooma has to find a balance between powerful features and service quality. This means blacklist and wildcard blacklisting feature has to meet a certain performance criteria. With no significant subscriber base, maybe a lot of performance hindering features would be doable. However things would hit the fan sooner or later if not careful.

Before you call something useless, I advise that you do some comparisons. It is perfectly fine to ask for something but don't get mad at Ooma for not delivering especially if you can't name one phone company that offers what you're asking for.

[ReginaOoma]

I ended up buying a phone that will verbally announce the calls as they come through so I no longer have to get up to check the call display. I get a lot of calls from telemarketers that call with the same name but just end up changing the last 4 digits of their number. I find that my new phone has helped with my sanity as I can wait for an important call and be in the middle of something yet when the phone rings, I no longer have to drop what I am doing to run to the screen to see who is calling, I can now just keep on doing whatever it is I was doing and listen to the phone ring once followed by the verbal announcement that says "Call from...." then another ring and again "Call from..." if it is not someone I know I let it go to the voice mail. The only drawback is that I had to shell out money for a new phone. It would have been nice if Ooma already came with the voice announce feature so I did not have to buy that on top of the Ooma system. I do hope that one day Ooma can block by name as I seem to get one group of telemarketers that like to call me with the same call display name but just change the last 4 digits of their number.

[Telo_BK]

Ooma allows 256 entries in personal blacklist. Wildcard capability to boot.

Spoofers can use any number at all. Blacklisting 256 numbers isn't going to do much, is it? Wildcards on numbers are not the solution, as is obvious. Why not just balcklist every possible number? That would solve the problem, while ensuring that no calls ever get through. What is also obvious is that blacklisting by name would make a huge difference, and Ooma obviously is ignoring multiple requests for this feature for years. It's inevitable, and might already have happened to me that a spoofer will use one of the over a thousand phone numbers in my contacts list. I'd rather not blacklist my friends, vendors, and customers. Since Nomorobo evidently doesn't allow blacklisting by name, it's a virtual certainty that their subscribers have already added some valid numbers in my contacts list (some have home, mobile and work numbers) to the community blacklist. As we have all seen, spoofers change numbers at will, and don't care who is the valid owner of whatever number they are using to place a particular call.

I really don't care how many numbers I am allowed to blacklist. What I care about is the end result. Ooma: 10-12 unwanted, and mostly spoofed calls per-day. COX, AT&T and Verizon: Average ZERO unwanted calls per-day. That's not BS. Seems to me (and I am quite manifestly not alone) that Ooma's blacklisting feature is useless for all intents and purposes. It's about time they step up and listen to their customers and act on the many requests to improve blacklisting by allowing it to filter by name with wildcards or, better- regular expressions.

In my opinion, buying a new phone and diverting my attention to listen to the announced number to replace Ooma's weak filtering would be a cop-out, and only marginally better than diverting my attention to answer the phone. But I fully understand the desperation that would lead to such measures, given the number of unwanted calls we, as Ooma subscribers, receive.

Now to you, Ibmofo: Pardon me for asking you to clarify your position. I didn't accuse you of anything, mrerely voiced my concerns, which you have addressed. I don't understand why you rush to Ooma's defense rather than urging them to improve. I am a subscriber, a customer. I do not work for a phone company. I once did, many years ago, but that was a small regional company and I don't even know if they are still in business. I didn't have a responsible position there, and really am not a fan of any carrier. They can all improve as far as I am concerned, and they all should. VOIP offered the promise of meaningful competition and therefore improvement. But I see the same intransigence that I always have from the entrenched carriers. I am disappointed. I can switch, but in doing so I will trade Ooma's poor implementation for fewer features and more expensive and more reliable service. (I never had an almost three day outage with any other carrier, but Ooma.) I came to Ooma with high expectations, and have wound up settling. I am sure others feel the same. However, I will say, that I have recommended Ooma to friends in certain situations. All of them have reliable cell phone service, with a single exception. And that exception was probably a mistake on my part, since the existing lines are used for a number of weekly teleconferences and a three day (or even one day) outage is untenable. For Ooma, such outages are more frequent than I imagined, and I wish I had checked the Twitter feed first, since the status in the "Status and Updates" forum here is wiped out with each new occurence. Thus there is no historical information, no log, other than a changelog for firmware updates. No need for any apologetics, it is what it is.

[kdfederer]

So what happens when they find out that the names are blacklisted, then they will change the caller id name and still get through. If they can figure out how to get around the blocked number, don't you think they could get around the blocked name?