Why doesn't Iphone have a call blocker, I am getting tired of paying for phone scam calls, why dpesn't someone make one. When my contract is up I am going back to the Droid.

Talk to your carrier to see if they offer such a service. This is not up to Apple to include.

The only way to truly block call is on the servers of your carrier so you have to talk to your carrier about blocking calls.

If you want to simulate a call blocker, you can place a silent ring tone of them. It isn't a true block but the calls will not alert you to their presence.

Allan

dshargrove wrote:

Why doesn't Iphone have a call blocker, I am getting tired of paying for phone scam calls, why dpesn't someone make one. When my contract is up I am going back to the Droid.

For one thing, true call blocking (ie. where the call NEVER actually connects through to your number) can only be done by the service provider at their switches.

The best a device can do is allow the call to connect, and then use the caller ID information to compare that to a list of allowed and a list of disallowed caller IDs. That is a feature known as blacklisting, but it is not the same as actually blocking a call completely.

So as suggested, contact your carrier and ask what they can do for you.

You may think so but in fact it is not possible to truly block call at the phone. It must be done at the carrier.

What your Droid was a simulated block like the silent ringtone I suggested earlier. If that solution is acceptable to you why not implement silent ringtones on the offending numbers?

Allan

This is not a feature of the iphone.

You can set a silent ringtone, see if your carreir offers this service, or do nothing.

Your choice.

Then put yourself on the national do not call list. Most civilized countries have one.

"With my Droid..."
"With my Droid..."
"With my Droid..."

OK. We get it. I talked to AT&T and the told me the same thing Tim told you: Put yourself on the do not call list.

Because they are telemarketers, if I don't answer it goes to voice mail, and still cost me minutes.

Huh? It costs you minutes for someone to call and for you not to answer them? What kind of backward system is that?

Yep, in the US you pay for incoming calls, or they are charged to your plan. I think there is one US carrier that doesn't charge for incoming calls...US Cellular, but standard practice with everyone else.

Wow! I'd read somewhere that you pay (or used to) to receive text messages (one reason texting didn't take off as quickly over there initially), but I didn't know you had to pay to receive calls as well.

So, basically, a carrier recieves money twice for the same call made between two people on the same network?

Crazy...

Do you have to pay to retrieve voicemails, or is that included in your inclusive minutes or free?

I believe what lead to this was the fact that US cell numbers do not have distinct area codes to distinguish between a landline & cell phone call...they all look the same. Thus, the practice of charging for all calls...easier to bookkeep. In Europe, don't cell numbers have distinct area codes?

Calls to the voice mail system are taken from your monthly minute allowance. With Visual Voice Mail, of course, that's a non-issue.

I rarely hear anyone complaining about running out of minutes any more. Many people have completely replaced their home phones with cell phones (I'm one) and have plans with more minutes than we'll ever use, rollover minutes, etc.

2 iPhones on our plan with AT&T. 1400 minutes a month, shared, 10 numbers we can call for free. Free nights and weekends. 300MB data on my wife's phone, 2GB a month on mine, 1000 text messages a month on hers, 200 a month on mine... costs us about $150 a month and we never go over. We could probably drop it down, but there are months when we come close, so it's not worth the bother.

In Europe, don't cell numbers have distinct area codes?

All mobile numbers in the UK (and other European countries I believe) have the same prefix, so it's easy to identify whether the call is going to or coming from a mobile phone. We don't have "area codes" for mobile phone numbers - they're treated as non-geographic numbers, so it costs the same no matter where in a country you are.

Does that mean, in the US, you can't tell whether you are making a cheap local landline to landline call or an expensive landline to long-distance mobile call before you make the call?