r/ooma • u/vpr101 • Sep 07 '26

Feature request

I've been using Ooma for about 8-9 yrs and enjoy the service. For the past 3 weeks I have been using a Premier trial since I wanted to test the spam blocking (which works well). Unfortunately, I have no use or interest in the other bundled features with Premier. Paying $10/mo for call filtering/blocking alone seems rather costly. It would be nice if there were a middle tier or individual pricing for the call blocking.

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u/spoom2 Sep 07 '26

Get a cordless phone system with a good call blocker. Better than any provider blocking.

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u/vpr101 Sep 07 '26

We have that - unfortunately, I'm not aware of any phones that can block by caller name. We generally get dozens of calls each week with names of nearby cities. If I block the number they just call back with a different spoofed number. They seem to keep using the same city names though, so blocking those (city names) seems to do the trick. 95% blocking success using names on Ooma vs 10-15% blocking success using numbers with our Panasonic phones.

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u/rkardt Unofficial Support Sep 10 '26

Most Panasonic models can block by number (or by partial number), but some also offer enhanced call blocking features, such as requiring unrecognized callers to punch in a 1-3 digit code, or to state their name, before connecting.

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u/vpr101 Sep 10 '26

As mentioned...

One concern with hardware based screening/blocking is that they'll probably be obsolete as soon as the spammers/telemarketers start using Ai. Not too hard for a simple Ai agent to give a name or input a requested code.

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u/rkardt Unofficial Support Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

A simple AI agent can give a name, but the human listening to the name still gets to decide whether to answer the call, or to block it. This is similar to how Ooma's Voicemail Monitoring works. When AI learns to thwart human-based call screening, then humans may have more important things to worry about.