ellis@no.spam wrote:
> They most certainly are. I had a problem with a pest that led me to
> add call block and later caller-id to my phone plan. The pest
> continued to call by using calling cards to get around the blocks and
> ID.
If he was using calling cards and presumably pay phones he was paying
dearly to be a pest. Sounds strange.
But most places have "Call Trace" (*57) in which the special unit of
the telephone company gets a record of the call and has means of
dealing with them. They charge about $1.50 per use, but if there is a
repeat problem it's worth using. They can see more info than
callerID, including blocked calls. I understand the special unit only
gets involved if there is a repeat problem, not isolated incidents.
IMHO, the major carriers should bar calls from entering their system
with faked caller IDs, such as VOIP systems that offer "111-111-1111".
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: $1.50 per use? How about eight to ten
dollars per use, which is more like it, at least in the case of SBC. I
suggested to the chairman of SBC (or to the flunky who takes his phone
calls and responds in his name) that telco should outlaw that all ones
combination or all zeros, etc and when 'dipping in their database' to
fetch the name, etc of the caller totally change all those entries to
the essence of 'information denied by caller' (in other words, a *67
type call) and treat it accordingly. If I block *67 type calls --
which I do -- then I do not want all ones or all zeros either.
Chairman's office told me that was quite impossible to do, and that if
they delivered all zeros or all ones they had 'done their job and
delivered caller ID' to me, so shut up and pay your bill. PAT]
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com