Fire Truck Came.......

[dlongnecker]

Cooking some dinner and triggered the fire alarm. I was working in the shop. Family turned off the ADT firealarm like they are supposed to.

While I was working my cellphone rang. It said, possible Spammer ADT. They said they tried to call the house, but couldn't get ahold of anyone so they dispatched a Fire Truck.

Firemen came, and I got charged for a false alarm.

I checked my Ooma Call Log and there is no record of a call from ADT. In fact no BLOCKED calls show up.

Is this a known problem with OOMA? I want to be able to whitelist ADT, but need to know the number that appeared.

D=

[TonyW]

All documented behavior. My solution is to send all levels of blocked calls to VM & configure Ooma to send an email notification for a new VM. Originating # will be part of the subject text. Works for me.

[murphy]

The mad dash to block robocalling has resulted in many valid callback numbers being blocked. Apparently companies like ADT use their callback numbers to cold call potential clients. That gets them added to the block list. I had a similar experience with my alarm company. I changed the configuration so the first number for them to call is my cellphone instead of an Ooma number. There is not just one callback number to white list. My alarm company has at least five that I know of. ADT being bigger probably has a lot more. They have to be able to handle multiple alarms from the entire country at the same time. Sadly my alarm company was totally unaware that call blocking, such as NoMoRobo, exists.

I don't understand why the alarm got called in in the first place. All alarm systems are required to wait a minimum of 30 seconds after an alarm before they place the call. That is plenty of time to clear a false alarm which prevents the call.

[AFOSAWIPS]

I had a visit from the PD yesterday after accidentally hitting the panic alarm button on my remote. Verification call from them was blocked and the police showed 5 min later. Half hour later they called on my cell, which was not primary, and said the attempt to reach me on my Ooma line reached a "disconnected number". According to ADT only 1 phone # should show on any outbound calls of this sort 800-328-2727, so I don't see why Nomorobo blocks it. I have added to contacts, but I assume the Nomorobo block overrides that. Have added my cell as a 2nd primary # since there is no call blocking app on that.

[murphy]

They probably use that number for cold calling potential customers. That is guaranteed to get the number added to the block list. Put the number in your Ooma contact list. That is supposed to "whitelist" the number and let it through in spite of NoMoRobo. I had the same problem with my alarm company and my cell phone is now primary.

I deleted "panic" from my fob a long time ago after having it in my shirt pocket and tripping the alarm while carrying something heavy.

[TonyW]

I had an excuse to explicitly test this function today while playing phone tag w/ the landlord.

- Call from landlord was blocked. Went straight to voicemail.

- Temporarily removed ALL blocks.

Unsure which list caused the block. Web search turned up no reports to the usual places.

- Next call from landlord rang phone & was logged.

- Added logged caller to Contact List & restored ALL blocks.

- Next call from landlord rang phone & was logged.

Whitelisting seems to be working as advertised.

[holmes4]

Ooma still doesn't log blocked calls, leading to problems such as this.

[TonyW]

Rather than keep waiting for a blocked call logging feature, IF you configure Ooma to:

- send ALL blocked calls to VM
- send an email notification of new VM

the originating number is included in the subject header, suitable for whitelisting. This works NOW.

[holmes4]

That assumes the caller doesn't hang up on the VM greeting.

[TonyW]

My assumption, which has so far borne out, has been that 'legit' calls will leave a msg & spam will most often hang up. "important' calls caught by filters are whitelisted after the 1st instance, although it MAY take a few to get ALL numbers for a specific caller.

Note: The kink in this plan is that recently, I've had deliveries made by 3rd parties who call en route. I quickly learned to disable blocking for the brief delivery windows. Otherwise, life is generally quiet.

As always, YMMV