For the past two weeks I’ve been getting two calls a day from telemarketers at (866) 402-1044 (may they burn in hell forever and ever amen).
Yes, I’m on the do not call list.
Yes, the first couple of times they called I said “take me off your list”.
Yes, I’ve filed a complaint.
Now all I can do is wait, and that’s the real problem:
Last month I paid over $300 for an iPhone, I’m obligated to pay AT&T $2,400 over the next two years, and Apple and AT&T WON’T PROTECT ME FROM SPAM?!?
I give Google zero dollars a year, and they block spam. If a spam gets through, the “mark as spam” button nukes it and helps make the spam blocker smarter.
The iPhone should give me the option to send calls from bad numbers to a black hole: no ring, no vibrate, no screen message, no entry in “recent” or “missed” calls, no voicemail. Apple didn’t even build in a silent ringtone that I could set to bad numbers; I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get one.
AT&T is just as useless. This is the only page on AT&T’s site I could find that says they don’t offer call blocking. Nice right?
AT&T does have a “Parental Controls” product for $5/month per line that lets you block calls from specific numbers, but I’m already paying about $100/month, and anyway, I don’t have a multi-line “family plan” so “Parental Controls” isn’t even an option.
To add insult to injury, when I went to AT&T’s customer site to sign up for bill pay and to research this issue, these checkboxes were pre-checked:
Note: these checkboxes weren’t part of the signup process, I had to discover them in the “my profile” section after signing up. Niiice.
I try to keep things lighthearted/non cussy around here, but in this case I just have to say FUCK AT&T and FUCK Apple.
5 Comments ↓
Whoah, you just cursed on your blog. Do you feel all tingly?
That’s what happened when I said “Science works, bitches” and I was just quoting xkcd.
Yeah, the Do Not Call registry — and the complaint-filing system — leave much to be desired. Or maybe it’s just that no one cares about the fact that they exist. (Hey, people selling auto-insurance: I don’t HAVE A CAR).
Love the idea that they should use google as the model. Slightly less in love with the knowledge that they are never going to.
I do feel all tingly, but maybe it’s just a stroke brought on by righteous consumer rage.
You think that’s bad? My sister had a stalker who would text-message her (she has AT&T, like the rest of us) in the middle of the night, often in the form of photographs of unmentionable things. We tried to get AT&T to block the texts, but they did nothing. We also went to the police, to record the abuse in case things got worse, and THEY tried to get AT&T to block the texts. Guess what? AT&T gave the Dallas Police Department the bird. WTF is up with THAT shiznit? The only thing that finally stopped the stalker was the DPD directly calling him and saying “Cut it out or you’re in big troubles.” Mindblowing.
It isn’t perfect, but Google’s Grand Central (grandcentral.com) works with any phone– mobile or landline. You can designate any number as “phone spam” and send it to ditchmail. I’ve found accessing it from the iPhone easy and satisfying. Hope it helps others.
Holden, appalling that AT&T won’t protect a paying customer from telemarketers never mind outright harassment. Telcos are such buttwipes: “We don’t want to just be dumb data pipes, we’ll fight network neutrality and do all sorts of packet shaping, but when it comes to protecting our paying customers, we DO want to be dumb pipes and not shield customers at all.” Makes my blood boil.
Thanks Michael, I’ll look into Grand Central, Havi also recommends it.