Hi all,
My in-laws' have a small restaurant business where they've had an uptick in harassing prank calls. They are on an antiquated ATT Merlin system with 2 lines and have one more line where a standard RJ11 phone is connected in the call hunt group. With as minimal disruption as possible, we want to implement an IVR (perhaps to dissuade and curb some of the harassing behavior) and also start logging the calls (to provide police - a police report has already been filed at this point, as well as an FCC complaint. Problem is, callers are spoofing or using burner apps to fake their numbers on every call). In terms of how this would look configuration wise, we would have their primary landline call-in number forward to the VOIP service, have the call screened/treated via IVR, etc, then forwarded to the secondary landline assuming the relevant option is pressed (other options would include hearing recordings and or being sent to voicemail).
A couple of priority features (but not necessarily requirements):
1) routing calls based on area code, specific phone numbers, etc or all of the above (Interestingly, I've been finding that many providers don't seem to offer call/callerID filtering. So far I've only come across 2-3 that have this capability.)
and in conjunction,
2) routing calls based on business hours
Any suggestions on some hosted VOIP services that won't break the bank? At this point, I think we may want to avoid plans that charge on a per minute basis... simply because we don't know what the incoming call usage is (ATT does not provide this level of detail). So it's a bit scary considering going to a per minute rate plan and end up with a nasty surprise.
I've looked at RingCentral, Anveo, and Voip.ms along with a number of other providers but wanted to get some more feedback and recommendations. I actually setup an account and got an inum DID to test out the voip.ms IVR and call routing rules and *really* like what they have to offer, but have been turned off by their per minute rates for *non* residential customers. Apparently they used to offer their monthly plan for residential and business customers but have since only made it available to residential customers. If we were to utilize this for my in-laws I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be sustainable for what is being charged (also because of inbound and outbound calls being billed from the forwarding occurring).
I don't want to deal with porting their primary landline number to VOIP at this time either. Nor do I want any new equipment or upgrades. Again, I want this to be as minimally disruptive as possible without incurring any more additional costs than necessary.
Any advice/recommendations/feedback would be appreciated, whether for how to deal with the harassing calls or what provider would best fit the need.
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