Advice for getting rid of telephone marketers and making a fixed line 'usable'?

[Anonymous]

We have a Verizon phone line. We elected not to pay the additional fee to have it omitted from the directory. We receive about 5 telephone marketing calls a day. We've stopped answering the phone and often just unplug it. Every time we turn it on there are about 15 silent recordings on the answering machine. It's useless so we dont give the number out to anyone or use the phone - but we're tied into a 2 year triple play commitment.

Does anyone also have this issue, and any advice?

It seems to me that Verizon (and other telecom operators that do this) choosing to de-incentivize having a phone ex-directory is shooting themselves in the foot. Surely this leads to lots of people not using their landlines??

[Anonymous]

Put your number on the do not call list. It helps, some.

[Anonymous]

Does your physical phone handset have a call block feature? Mine can store up to 40 numbers that will be automatically blocked and not ring after the first time. You can go through the caller id list and select block.

[Anonymous]

Save your money. We pay to have our Verizon FIOS phone excluded from the directory, and we still get at least a dozen garbage calls a day. We keep it unplugged. It's a waste.

[Anonymous]

Also, did you know that if you have Fios there's a setting on your tv to enable the caller id to show up on the tv if you're watching something? We mostly use a landline and this feature really prevents a lot of unnecessary getting up (not that I'm watching a ridiculous amount of tv). Surprised that you experience this amount of telemarketing. We're on the DNC list and carefully guard our home number and I would say that we don't even get one telemarketing call a day--a bad day would be two.

[Anonymous]

Setup a google voice number, and forward your phone to that, at least for a while. You can block unlimited numbers so telemarketers will call for a while and then get disconected message, so that might help (helped us get rid of some daily telemarketers on my cell).

Can you set distinctive rings, such that any unknown number is silent and only known numbers ring? Again google voice can help, as it can be the number you give out for 'home' and when google voice forwards itselfs to your home phone, it can present a caller id of your google voice number, so that your phone will ring.

One varient, you can forward only on no-answer/busy (voicemail forwarding) and then in google voice have the default voicemail be a 'disconnected' recording (google these you can find them around to record to as your message), and for known numbers it will get your personal greeting. You'll want to upload/sync your contacts with google voice to ensure that callers don't get disconnected tone (any new callers or telemarketers would).

This is a variation of this technique to get free unlimited cell calling using friends & family + google voice
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/the-ethics-of-free-cellphone-calls/

[Anonymous]

Can you plug a fax machine into the line? Before we switched to ooma, I plugged a fax machine into our phone line for a few days at a time. Worked like a charm. Our telemarketing calls dropped off by 99%.

[Anonymous]

Same problem here. WE're on the do not call list, but get them all the time, like 5/day. When I answer and say "hello", if they don't respond in 1 second, I hang up as I know it's a telemarketer. They use a system where it makes many calls at once, listens for "hello", then directs it to a live person.. but that takes 2-3 seconds.

Just got woken up from one of these an hour ago while trying to nap. Argh.

[Anonymous]

I answer all the calls and tell them to put me on the do not call list (hopefully you've already put your number on the national do not call list). It takes a little while for that to work but it really does cut down on the calls. Except during election season - political telemarketers don't have to honor that list. We used to have the telezapper - it does work. Google this problem - there's some tones you can add to the beginning of your answering matching to make them think it's a nonworking number. We don't get many junk calls on our listed phone number.

[Anonymous]

We are on the do not call list and still get about 5 telemarketers a day. We unplugged our phone right before the election and never plugged it back in.