OK, Verizon. We give up. You win - or half win. A series of articles last week suggest that Verizon is reducing service to land line customers in hope that they will give up expensive-to-maintain landlines and switch to FIOS, Verizon wireless or other Verizon-provided communication. There will be no attempts to improve land-line service. A conspiracy theorist might even say that the TWO calls a day we now receive from "Rachael" (would you believe they actually place public ads to recruit their telescammers) is part of that Verizon's plan to cause landline customers to switch.
So, Verizon, you win the first part. We are giving up your home land line. Monday, the installer is coming from our cable company to switch phone service to them. They make it easy. The bulding super says if that doesn't work out, he recommends MAGICJACK! which has worked well for some here.
So you do the math. Home phone and home office phone - two inside wire maintenance charges plus all of the various line and calling fees. Pushing $1,000 per year. Gone forever.
Have you ever heard of a Pyrrhic victory?
It's outrageous that Verizon offers so few tools (and all at customer expense) to block robocalls.
Blocking individual numbers is no answer for those of us (most of us, that is) who are bombarded with these calls from constantly changing numbers. Verizon can and should do more.
I haven't heard a peep from them about what they WILL do.
NOMOROBO. Every time a bell rings, a telescammer has been disconnected!
NOT – from the old movie, . . .. an angel gets his wings.
Updating this thread:
Over a month ago, we cancelled our home and home office Verizon land lines, switched to telephone service from our internet provider, upgraded our phone instruments, downloaded the app to allow our home phone to simultaneously ring on our cell phone, signed up with NOMOROBO and never looked back!
We receive from 1 to 4 scam calls per day on each line. The bell rings once and stops. In most cases and with a web search, the caller ID can be tracked back to: “free” consolidate your debt (Rachael); or “free” cruise; or “free” alarm system; or “free” medicare card update; or dozens of other scams designed to get our credit card number and that all important 3 or 4 digit code on the card.
Unfortunately, we suspect that, as more and more subscribers do what we did - - opt out of Verizon land lines and get Nomorobo to immediately disconnect scam calls, the roboscammers can and will devote more of their freed up resources and man power toward attacking the fewer remaining land line customers.
With Verizon having declining revenue to support its land line operation and block these calls at the source, we see the telescam problem for remaining Verizon subscribers getting progressively worse, not better, which is why we don’t regret moving away.
For any Verizon customers that read this thread, if you have Verizon Digital Voice then you can use the free NOMOROBO service to block calls right now. There are a number of threads here on the Verizon Forums documenting how this works and what you need to do to use NOMOROBO (basically just activate the Simultaneous Ring feature you already have available on your phone, and then sign up for the free NOMOROBO service). I have been using NOMOROBO for probably a year or so, love it, has made it a lot quieter at our house.
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Justin
FiOS TV: Extreme HD, Internet: 50/50, Digital Voice
VMS Enhanced Service: 1 server, 2 clients
Keller, TX 76248 (VHO 1)
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