We have a land line with AT&T phone service. My gripe? I have Privacy Manager® to keep from having the pesky people who don’t feel they should have to announce themselves ringing into my house. To me, the phone is like my front door. If I want to look out the window and decide I don’t want to answer the door, it’s my door – my decision. Same thing with my phone.
I have caller ID so I can decide whether I want to answer my phone. Privacy Manager was designed to take that one step further – if someone wanted to obscure who they were, then Privacy Manager would intercept that call and not put it through until I allowed it on my end. I have no idea how many calls are being blocked outright by people who choose not to identify themselves, but I do know that Privacy Manager® is not working the way it used to. It used to be that the phone would ring and the person at the other end was told no one was there to take the call and that was the end of it. Now if you aren’t there to accept or reject the call, the call rings through anyway and the caller can leave a message. Most of them don’t, but my experience is that companies use computer dialing and what message that is left is largely unusable.
Now, not only do I have phone calls coming through that I wanted blocked, I have the added “benefit” of a useless message from someone I probably didn’t want to talk to anyway.
I got on the phone with customer service at AT&T to talk to them about this change. It appears there is no mechanism in place to talk to a service representative about service changes like this one and how that impacts customers like me, who pay for that service in order to block those kinds of calls. As I tried to explain to the customer service person, I can’t get enough information from the caller in order to file a complaint with my local attorney general or with the national Do Not Call list, before the caller hangs up, so my choice is to not take the calls at all. My experience is that every blocked ID call is from someone with whom I have no prior relationship. It has been years since cell phones have been blocked by default. The argument that a disproportionate number of desired calls are blocked is a poor argument. In fact, when I challenged that statement the rep could offer no statistics that warranted a change in how the service works. All I was told was that AT&T had gotten complaints about desired calls being blocked. How many complaints? As I explained to the representative, most people aren’t going to call when they think the service is working. Then I asked what was the complaint to subscriber ratio that warranted the change? He couldn’t give me an answer. I told him that this would be easier to understand if even a simple majority of subscribers had complained about desired calls being blocked due to not being able to answer the phone, or if 500 people had died because of a blocked number, but this sounds like a “squeaky wheel” problem. I explained to the service representative that the number of desired calls that are blocked by privacy manager are so few, in fact my personal experience is zero, that putting the calls through is not warranted and defeats the purpose of the system. I went on to say that instead of telling those customers that Privacy Manager might not be right for them, the company changed it for those of us who knew how it worked and was happy with how it worked, and never bothered to tell us. Now Privacy Manager doesn’t work unless I’m physically able to take and reject the call. I don’t want it to work like that and that’s not the way it’s advertised that it works.
Nowhere, nowhere, NOWHERE does AT&T state that if you do not answer the phone, the call will go through! Not stating that up front is misleading and deceptive advertising.
If I’m not there to answer the phone, I don’t want the call coming through, especially when I’m paying nearly $84 a year ($6.99 per month) to the phone company to stop it.
AT&T is very expensive compared to other phone services, yet its services are poor and poorly though out in comparison to smaller companies. I have better ways of spending my money than with a company that charges so much for sub-standard service. AT&T is right in that I have a choice and I’m now going to look at exercising that option.
I can’t even hear who is calling. It says press one to hear who is calling and I get disconnected. If I wait and say hello, hello I get disconnected!
This only happens on calls that say privacy manager 415-545-0073. I am not sure who’s number that is. My son says it is someone from social services calling him.
The instructions for privacy manager say you have to call to turn it off, heck I want to remove it completely. Calls from unknown are put through all the time. It’s almost as if it works when it wants to.
I too have caller ID and when it reads unknown caller I will not answer. I did not have this privacy manger until I signed up for online all distance or something to that effect. I believe I should be able to manage this online with my other services. I hate calling AT&T as it takes what seems like a lifetime to get through!
Thought I would add my opinion about this “has a mind of its own” service!
Well, Amy! Two years later, and it is still the same! I can’t believe there are no settings to control the handling of the call. I don’t want unknowns to even be given the option to bypass the system. Also, if they bypass the system and I have their number restricted, privacy manager lets the call through and I don’t like that. I don’t know where to turn. Have you made any more progress on this?
FOUND A HACK! Use Call Block *60 and add Privacy Manager to the Call Block list and Take A Message to the Block list, that way when they try to call, and press 2 to record their name they get a recording that says “we’re sorry the person you are calling is not available at this time, please try your call again later” Included in Complete Choice Enchanced works in Austin, Texas Fireside Wire Center.
You know the number that shows up as Privacy Manager on the caller id screen copy that number and add it using call block or dial *60 listen to the instructions followed by #01# after they call,
It sounds like you get different types of calls than we do. We have had Privacy Manager for years, and it has seemed to always work the same way. We tested it when we first got it and we found it works this way:
If a call is made from a “Blocked” number, the caller is given the prompt to press 0 to un-block their number. Then it comes through like a regular unblocked call. We get blocked calls from family all the time, but we don’t even realized their number is (was) blocked.
If a call is made from an “Out of area” or “Unknown” line (usually from a solicitor with an old phone system or from a third world country), then they are prompted to press “2” to leave their name. This hardly ever happens because most of those are automated and their machines don’t know enough to send a “2”.
If they do press a “2” and leave their name, I get a call from 415-545-0073. When I pick it up I hear their name. If I don’t want to talk to them, I press something (I can’t remember since it hasn’t happened for such a long time), and it rejects their call and disconnects them. If I press something else, then I can talk to them.
If I don’t press anything, then I must not be home, and it’s probably my answering machine, so they ring through again with a different CID number that says “TAKE A MESSAGE”. If I was home, this never happens.
If you never want to get this kind of call, perhaps you can record your outgoing message on your answering machine to send a “2” to reject the call.
or use the call block and block calls from Privacy Manager, and take a message numbers. I did. Soon to be posted on my YouTube channel!
If you paid your bills on time, you wouldn’t need Privacy Manager at all.
The situation described here only occurs when the caller records their name, you are not there, and you either have an answering machine or voicemail. The service only instructs the caller that you are unavailable if you don’t have an answering machine or voicemail. When the caller records their name, privacy manager attempts to reach you live to announce the call, but if you are not there then the call is sent to your answering machine or voicemail if you have either one. Since an answering machine or voicemail can’t listen and decide who it wants to talk to or not, the caller is able to leave a message. The situation is arguable worse with the answering machine because the privacy manager service will put the voice screened call through to your line a second time to let your machine answer the call. It is possible that you could answer the then unscreened call manually before your machine does, whereas with voicemail it would be sent straight there. Since you are not there to answer or decline the call, etc. , the service assumes that the caller should at least be able to leave a message which you can do with as you please. At least you were did not personally take the unwanted call. The service is working as it was designed. It is no different than using caller id without privacy manager and deciding which calls to answer, and which ones to let your answering machine or voice mail answer, if you have either one. When you are not there, you have no choice in any event.