Showing posts with label how to block calls on a landline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how to block calls on a landline. Show all posts

Friday, October 22, 2021

Landline Spam Call Blockers Bring Peace to Your Home Phone

At 6:30 a.m. on a recent morning, our phone rang.  Since we have four adult daughters and eight grandchildren, we automatically answer phone calls, even when we receive them at a ridiculous time, because we worry that it could be emergency. Instead, it was someone calling to talk to me about changing my Medicare insurance plan, which I have absolutely no interest in doing.  My husband and I were very annoyed to be awakened by a spam caller.

Later that day, my husband called AT&T to complain about the constant barrage of spam phone calls we get all day long, every day.  We were tired of getting calls from garage door companies, travel companies, roofers, charities, politicians, surveys, Medicare and other insurance companies, and so many others.  We immediately hang up on all robocalls, but we still received plenty of calls from real people.  

During the AT&T call with a very pleasant young customer service representative, he did two things which immediately brought peace and quiet to our home!

First, he renewed our phone number listing at donotcall.gov.  We had registered our number on that service 16 years ago.  Apparently, it is important to renew the listing frequently, or your registration becomes so old that companies ignore it.  

However, I knew that being on the do not call list would not permanently end all the calls, especially those from smaller companies, and local businesses.  I casually said to the customer service representative, "I wish we could block calls on our home phone line as easily as we can on our cell phones."  He shocked me by saying, "if you get a landline call blocker, (Ad) you can stop any calls you do not want to receive."  I had never heard of such a thing!

The customer service representative told me that Amazon, Walmart and some other sites offer these call blockers.  He even went online with me to help me choose one.  (This is service above and beyond what I expect from any company!)

You can find a number of different companies which offer call blockers at: landline call blockers (Ad).  While I will not suggest a particular brand to you, the AT&T rep gave me some practical suggestions for choosing the best one for you.  He said that I should look at ones that have received at least a four star rating from a large number of customers.  He also suggested I read the product description and comments thoroughly to make sure it would work on our phone and that it sounded like something that would meet our needs.  Finally, he mentioned that we also need to have Caller ID in order for a call blocker to work.  We already have Caller ID, so that was not a problem.

The landline call blocker (Ad) that we selected had a 4.5 star rating from nearly 600 reviewers. It sounded easy to connect and, when we received it, my husband did not have a problem plugging it into our wall jack and phone.  It came with 14,000 spam numbers which it was already programmed to block, and we can add up to 2000 new phone numbers as they come in.  After setting it up, we have only had about 10 spam calls in the past several weeks, and it was easy for us to block those numbers, so the spammers cannot use those same numbers to call us again. 

Since we know that some companies have many phone numbers they use to place calls, we could get a few more calls from that same business but, hopefully, we will gradually block them all.  At worst, we now only receive one or two unwanted calls in a day, which is a huge improvement over what we experienced in the past.  Many days, we do not receive any unwanted calls.

My husband did encounter problems registering the device online with the manufacturer, but that does not seem relevant to the fact that the device is working, our phone is quiet, and we are not being interrupted every half hour to answer the phone. 

Whether you want a landline call blocker (Ad) for yourself, or for an elderly relative who keeps getting into conversations with spam callers, choosing one of these devices could be a good way to keep your sanity and prevent spam calls. 


You can find gifts for retirees and others at my Etsy Store, DeborahDianGifts:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDianGifts

Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us.  You will receive a weekly email with the most current post.
 
Disclosure: This blog may contain affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase from an Amazon ad, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.  

If you are interested in learning more about financial planning for retirement, where to retire, Social Security, Medicare, common medical issues as you age, and more, use the tabs or pull down menu at the top of the page to find links to hundreds of additional helpful articles.

You are reading from the article:  http://www.baby-boomer-retirement.com

Photo credit: Amazon ad