Withheld Numbers Bypassing Call Guardian

[petermc]

Hi,

Ive recently connected to the new phone system and have a BT Phone with a built in call blocker.  I think it used to be called Call Guardian but is now called True Call.

Basically, when someone calls, they have to announce who they are and press the # key for the call to come through to me.

This is all working fine for calls from people with a visible phone number but people calling from withheld numbers are coming straight through without having to announce themselves.

I can see that this has been brought up once before and the two bits of advice were to reboot the hub and also to make sure the Caller Display feature was enabled.  I’ve checked with Virgin who have confirmed that caller display is enabled and I’ve also just rebooted the hub but the issue is still there.  I’ve also taken the phone to someone else’s house and tried it on their line and it works fine so it is not an issue with the handset.  It seems to be an issue with my phone line.

[goslow]

The BT Premium phone not screening 'Unknown' calls after switchover has been mentioned on here in the past. The Advanced phone will be from a similar range of devices, no doubt.

There is a 'nuclear' option of doing a full reset on the phones and the base station and effectively doing a complete setup of the cordless phones from scratch when connected to the VM 21CV phone line from the hub.

Similar past topic here

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/bt-premium-phone-call-blocking/td-p/5237535

and at the end of the topic user @kevin1988 reported success by doing this full reset of everything.

However, there is no guarantee at all that this will fix your problem. Also it will (very likely) wipe out all of your phone contacts on the phones so, on that basis, decide if it is something you want to try with those caveats before doing it!

[Client62]

One for VM to check, is the Hub using the Caller Id style of a BT exchange "ESTI FSK with PRI(UK)" ? 

[Tom_W1]

Hi @petermc thanks for your post here in the Community although we're sorry to hear of the concerns you've raised here.

Please allow me to send you a PM so we can look into things further for you, kindly expect the PM to arrive shortly and respond directly when you can!
Many thanks

[petermc]

First phone to have this feature.

[petermc]

I tried resetting the base and resetting the phone.  Neither made any difference.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

[goslow]

I'd be out of further suggestions to try, unfortunately. The issue of BT trueCall phones bypassing 'unknown' incoming calls has been mentioned on here before. I can't recall a specific answer to the problem and you have already tried the more common past solutions.

I would always recommend that anyone wanting the trueCall screening features (which are very good/useful) gets the original trueCall standalone unit and adds some cordless phones to that

https://www.truecall.co.uk/category-s/116.htm

The standalone unit has way more features and settings that the BT phones to fine-tune the screening process.

Also there have been a good few topics on here where the standalone trueCall device has encountered issues like the one one are experiencing with the unknown calls breaking through the screening..

In these cases, trueCall support has been able to remotely 'dial in' to the trueCall unit and fix the problem through a combination of firmware updates and/or tweaking the settings on the trueCall device to match the configuration of the VM line. The BT phones have no ability to change/update the trueCall configuration on the phone.

If you added a trueCall device to your current setup, you would just turn off the trueCall screening/answering machine on the phones themselves and let the trueCall unit take over screening and answering machine functions.

[Hosay299]

Hi just seen this post and is what we are also finding out as this am the call was shown as withheld and was in caps letter which normally does not do it that way 

Was a issue or a fix found 

[Matthew_ML]

Hey Hosay299, thank you for reaching out and I am sorry to hear this.

Sorry just to confirm the only difference if that WITHHELD is coming through on capital letters? If so I wouldn't worry about this if that's the only difference.

What mode of phone is this ?

[Hosay299]

HI yes as normally it lower case will keep a eye just the phone ring on the like setting for noral person not a un known ring 

Yes but it should be as could the be using somthing on ur network like a script to have withheld as they know it by pass things on the new phone network 

The phone is a bt 8500 twin handset and worked fine on the old cooper wire network with no BY PASSING of it

[Matthew_ML]

I wouldn't worry about that it could of been a software update in the phone it will not affect you using the phone.

Also since its a phone issues we wouldn't be able to fix it this you  would need to reach out to the manufacture  we only provide the line rental not the phone.

With the digital line it may have caused this but again it won't affect the call quality or people getting through to you.