TIPS Preventing Call Slamming

w1ve

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I get 5 to 10 calls a day, almost every day, that play random sounds into my voice mail... water running, boilerroom background noise,etc. Part of the problem is the numbers change all the time, so very hard to stop.

I changed my call flow so that if a call goes to voice mail, I have a prompt to press 1 before leaving voice mail. This seems to have stemmed the tide a little bit, but still happening.
Paying 0.0003/min for inbound, so not the cost, but just thr hassle of deleting the voicemails!

I
 

billsimon

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What would be the motivation behind this? What does a caller have to gain by doing this?

Only thing I can think of is to be sure your voicemail timeout is reasonably low. 60 seconds seems good to me; 120 seconds max. It will also encourage long-winded people to be a little more concise when leaving voicemail (I hate listening to a long message).
 

kenn10

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I have an IVR on the incoming calls that states the recording is there to stop telemarketers, blah blah and press 5 to connect the call. I don't get any junk calls anymore. I also use NoMoRobo on the front end ring group to eliminate as many robo calls as possible. Your calls sound like prank calls so this strategy may or may not help you.
 

wardmundy

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We use something like @kenn10. It's modified slightly from the traditional FreePBX announcement code.

It plays a greeting, tells the caller to press 7, waits up to 10 seconds or passes the call to an IVR or ring group when the caller presses 7. Otherwise, it hangs up the call:

Code:
[hello-caller]
exten => s,1,GotoIf($["${CHANNEL(state)}" = "Up"]?begin)
exten => s,n,Answer
exten => s,n,Wait(1)
exten => s,n(begin),Noop(Playing announcement Howdy)
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=10)
exten => s,n(play),Background(custom/nv-GenericWelcome&silence/1&continue-in-english&press-7,nm)
exten => s,n,WaitExten(,)
exten => 7,1,Goto(ivr-1,s,1)
exten => t,1,Hangup
exten => i,1,Hangup
;--== end of [hello-caller] ==--;
 

wardmundy

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If your SIP provider supports early media like BulkVS does, you can modify it slightly so you don't even get billed for calls from creeps:
Code:
[early-media-call]
exten => s,1,Progress
exten => s,n(begin),Noop(Playing announcement Howdy as Early Media)
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=10)
exten => s,n,Playback(custom/nv-GenericWelcome&silence/1&continue-in-english&press-7,noanswer)
exten => s,n,WaitExten(,)
exten => 7,1,Goto(ivr-1,s,1)
exten => t,1,Hangup
exten => i,1,Hangup
;--== end of [early-media-call] ==--;
 
Last edited:

w1ve

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Thanks for the hints. Will implement. as for why? Some tariffs in some area codes pay you to deliver calls -- this is what I believe.

Great team here! Thanks for all the examples.

BTW @wardmundy, loving bulkvs. Amazing rates and seems to work well. $0.0055/min. for Toll free N/A, blows away everyone, who bottom out at $0.019 typically.
No minimums, very fast tech support, very fast free porting.
 

Halea

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Can you think of alternate solutions to get rid of those nuisance robocalls?
I've been using a short welcoming ivr message followed by 1 second timeout and extension ringing (without expecting the caller to press any keys). That works quite well to drop most robocalls, but unfortunately it also drops legitimate robocalls like doctors' offices reminding of appointments etc.
 

hawk#1

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set up an extension just for use by robo callers that you want. set that ext route to bypass your ivr and let the dr's office know that they need to send all your calls to that extension and they should know how to send robo call to an extension.
 

mainenotarynet

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Or better yet note the numbers that the Drs office robodialer uses (usually always the same #) and custom Inbound route to bypass the IVR altogether.
 

Twilight Sparkle

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setup a system to auto dial them back every 20sec with random audio files... till they erase the number or stop using it.
- yes the numbers might change at random but - by doing this you could build a list that you can share as well as tie up the lines
 

Twilight Sparkle

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The majority of the spam calls have spoofed the caller-id so you would be harassing innocent people whose numbers were utilized by the telemarketer scum.
that blows i forgot about that grrrr... stupid scammers.... yeah ok dont do my ploy... ugh
 

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