I was grateful for a creative Verizon employee who figured out that he could get me a $1000 credit for an ancient iPhone if I added a new phone line to my account.

After studying on the benefits, I determined this was a good way to obtain the 15 Pro Max. We worked through the selection of a new number. I have had a number for years with what I thought would be easy comprehension. But, with repeated digits, I have found it to be hard for people to follow. XXa-bcDD seemed like a good pattern of digits, but it is not.

So there we were, looking at the available numbers for the second phone line. I determined that having no repeated numbers would be desirable. After a few attempts, we had a number that was just that...numbers. Ideal, I thought.

Well, ideal and an unbelievably bad choice. Within minutes of activating the new phone, I was receiving calls and texts on the secondary new line. "Diane, it is Joe Biden. I need your continued support..." "Diane, it's Barack Obama...will you help us defeat..." Texts, calls, and non stop. Literally a dozen a day. No matter how many times I respond with delete and report as junk, I get call after call.

I determined that I would see if Verizon would change the number. After the last attempt in person at a Verizon store, resulting in two hours of mind-numbing delay, I tried the Verizon chat function.

Sure enough, in this age of AI, the chat bot could interpret my selections. I wanted a new number. Here are two selections. Would you like to try again? Yes, I would. In a couple of trials, I finally got a perfect number.

AbA - CbbC.

Perfect. It is easy to say, easy to remember, and mirrors both prefix and digits. Best of all, Cb is my birth year. So, I can more easily remember it.

No calls on the new number. No texts. Nothing. A perfect number.

Point of the long story is...don't give up...use the force...use their technology...and find a solution.

It's not that important to me. Just give me the first one available. I don't even need to remember it because I don't call myself.

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:

Within minutes of activating the new phone, I was receiving calls and texts on the secondary new line. "Diane, it is Joe Biden. I need your continued support..." "Diane, it's Barack Obama...will you help us defeat..." Texts, calls, and non stop.

I've activated temporary phones on several occasions and in every case, I was bombarded with spam texts and calls within minutes of activation. I have no doubt the cell phone providers are selling your information to 3rd party telemarketers.

I had an old friend who was getting calls from debt collectors. He got mad about all the collector calls and decided to change his phone number. Ironically the new number was getting calls from the previous owners debt collectors.

My number is abc-abca. I used to work for Schwans and former customers still remember my number!

I would like to have one of those phones that never receive any calls. My cell number gets about 20 bogus calls for every legit call. I can wear myself out checking caller ID and punching the button to ignore.

My first cell phone was in 1997 and I still have the same number. Handy tool a couple of times per week, otherwise it is just annoying. Hard to believe that I'm still paying the bills every month.

When I moved from California to Utah I wanted to disassociate myself from my old number and an area code that tied me to my old residence.

I found NumberBarn for $25 each I found some nice numbers for both of our phones. Probably were "virgin" numbers also, as we get almost no crap calls.

I turn on "Do not disturb" on my android phone and only numbers listed in my contacts ring through. Everyone else can leave a message.

quote:

Originally posted by Paten:
I turn on "Do not disturb" on my android phone and only numbers listed in my contacts ring through. Everyone else can leave a message.

Iphone featrues the same type of setting and I've been using mine for at least 4 years now. As a result the ROBOCALL list has me down as a non answerer and I only get span calls when an election is coming up.

Point is that not answering any calls not on your contact list is the only way to get rid of these spam calls.

Well we've been trying to get ahold of you regarding your car's extended warranty.

I recently added a second number because I was selling a bunch of stuff from my dad's death and I didn't want my real number in the ether. The first number clearly belonged to a prostitute. The calls I got (voice mail didn't answer) were pretty darn clear. So got it changed. The second belonged to a cleaning service that went bankrupt so bill collectors ad nauseam. Finally the third number try has only the usual stuff of my car needed a warranty.

It would be nice IF the cell and landline providers would implement a secondary numeric number to complete calls and if not entered would route the incoming call to voicemail. Filtering out these spam and scam calls would be great.

It could be done with a landline and the addition of a PBX “please enter the extension of the party…” while all other calls would be routed to a non existent “attendant” which would be voicemail but by the time you purchase and install the PBX your costs have increased.

The phone companies couldn’t use the excuse that they would lose revenue stream from calls as long as the call was “completed” via voicemail, technically the call was “completed” as it was “answered”, the losers being that the originators would be paying for calls with no human interaction aka less chance for consumers to be scammed and consumers having to pay more for the additional filter and additional time to receive a legitimate call.

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
It would be nice IF the cell and landline providers would implement a secondary numeric number to complete calls and if not entered would route the incoming call to voicemail. Filtering out these spam and scam calls would be great.

Companies like at&t make money selling your data to 3rd party companies, then turn around and make more money signing customers up to services like AT&T ActiveArmor to protect them from the same 3rd party companies that are causing the issues in the first place.