The ABCs of Verizon’s Call Filter

A week ago I signed up for Verizon’s new Call Filter service that identifies callers as Robo Callers, Spammers, etc.

When you subscribe to the basic (free) service Verizon blocks the name portion of Caller ID so you cannot see the names of who is calling.

For an additional $2.99 a month Verizon will unblock the name portion of Caller ID so that you can (once again) see the names of who is calling you…sort of.

I have a couple of phones kicking around and I used one to call myself. The phone number was correct, but the name identified as “QFC Foods”, which is the name of a nearby grocery store.

Most of the Caller ID names come in as city names, such as “Oklahoma City, OK”. I don’t know that displaying the place name of a telephone number (which is easily obtained using the area code and prefix) exactly qualifies as Caller ID nor is it worth $2.99 a month.

My bank, Midwest Bank, shows up as “Call Filter: Robo Caller”

Dish Network tried to call me and they showed up one time as a “Robo Caller” and one time as “Call Filter: ⚠️DISH NETWORK”

Meanwhile, those incessant spam calls telling me that my free Google listing has expired continue to come in…and Verizon’s Call Filter gives no special notice.

I would rate Verizon’s Call Filter as follows:

A – A lot of money
B – Basically worthless
C – Can’t filter the Google spammers
D – Don’t block calls using it
E – Effort is there, but Effectiveness is not.
F – Failure. It’s a failure.

If I were to trust the Call Filter to actually block calls I would be blocking a lot of legitimate (and important callers.)

The bottom line is that this is an ineffective implementation.