That ... is truly

Awesome!

I have a HUGE grin on my face!

HAHA! My hero! But what is the name of this company who is faxing you??

brilliant. bravo.

I am in awe of this solution.. I wonder if Callvantage has this option?!?!

Or if the company has a 1-800 number, their cost goes up and up...

that's AMAZING. We should cross this with an EECB and epic amounts of magic would happen.

That is sort of amazing.

But what an odd feature for VOIP. I can't think of any examples right now, but the "redirect my calls to someone else" seems like it might have potential for mishaps/abuse.

But, in all seriousness, HIGH FIVE.

I've been giving out my GrandCentral number to everyone lately. GC has the ability to mark calls as spam, then play a number disconnected message.

awww... now *I* want to start getting fax spam!

Seems a bit misdirected - rather than punishing the person who's actually faxing you, you're making the receptionist's life more miserable.

Sort of like stealing someone else's parking space when someone's parked in yours. Is it really retribution or just the forwarding of bad karma?

Since you already tracked them down, and since it seems they're in the US... wouldn't it be more fun to sue them for statutory damages of $500 *per junk fax*?

@rixatrix: I see it as akin to a company sending you a box of manure every day. You call them up and ask them to stop and they say they're too busy. So instead, you reject the delivery and the mail carrier returns it to the company (only a day older and stinkier).

I see no ill-intentions or malice on the part of the person who never wanted the box of manure.

So full of awesome right there

@esd2020: Hmm, I dunno, his solutions seems quite satisfying. Sometimes cash is so hollow.

*grin* OK, they probably won't connect what is happening and why, but it IS funny. Funnier if you could have gotten the company's marketing dept. number, though.

I call this forcing corporate responsibility.

I call it genius. :)

Interesting approach. I used to get bombarded at my home office with faxes from an assortment of difference companies including local restaurants, doctors offices, etc. If they ignored my request to remove my number, I simply waited until after office hours and faxed them 50 sheets of black paper along with a note to remove my number. Sometimes it worked.

@rixatrix: well the OP did try and track down the person doing the faxing. Since the receptionist wasn't too interested in helping out the OP gave her some motivation to do so.

Yes... that company can go eff... err.. fax... themselves. Brilliant title!

Pat, Mr. Consumer Action Hero of the Week,

you deserve a gold star. Pure genius move all around.

@esd2020: plus, since he's not actually receiving any junk faxes, only the calls, does that still count as a junk fax?

Box of manure every day would be nice, could have one heck of a good garden. Plenty of fertilizer!

Hmm, so, this forwarding of number - I assume it lets him choose what incoming numbers are forwarded? Or is he forwarding all of his legitimate faxes now? Which would seem silly.

"Now all the fax spammers are sending faxes to the receptionist at the company that sold the guy's telephone number to them"

No....

All his calls are going to one company that faxed him. Most phone systems have this mysterious ability to redirect incoming calls. It is often refered to as 'call forwarding'.

Fuck. Yes.

@Necroscope: no, he said that VOIP can redirect "any number to another". That means only the junk faxes are being redirected.

I can hear that "Real American Hero" music in the background.

@rixatrix: Maybe, maybe... but then the receptionist is handling an increased volume of calls as a result, so the business is slowed down and starts costing more. He or she is but a casualty in a war... tragic but necessary.

that is just....brilliant. kudos.

@maztec: "Box of manure every day would be nice, could have one heck of a good garden. Plenty of fertilizer!"

Yes, but unfortunately, you eventually reach a saturation point at which the box of manure realizes diminishing returns.

Now if only there was something I can do about the telebot calls I get that it may be too late to extend my automobile extended warranty.

@rixatrix:

It's the receptionist's job to help direct the call to the right person. In this case, the moron who's faxing you.

She didn't want to do her job being the representative of the company?

Fine.

Hopefully he is only directing the incoming calls from them, back to them, not all calls.

@esd2020: I believe so... and most VoIP companies' systems have great call logs, it'd be quite an easy case. SUE SUE SUE... see if that gets your # off their lists... otherwise, profit!

I think this is fabulous but two questions:

1. If the OP forwarded his calls to the receptionist number, how does he receive ANY calls? Can VoiP allow forwarding of selected calls only (i.e. just fax calls?).
2. When you forward, if the receptionist has caller ID, will it display her own number (as call originator) or the OP, (as the forwarding number)?

Now to redirect telemarketing calls to the phone numbers of their respective CEOs.

That was awesome. Nice job!

I had a general fax machine on my desk for a short time. When the advertised fax would finish printing I would dial the number on it (ie if it said call 800-something for a $99 trip to Disneyworld, I'd call the 800-something) and fax their ad back to them. Since the number was usually to a call center, and the fax machine speaker was loud enough for me to hear them answer, I'd usually get some fun responses before the hang up. Since the job for me didn't last long enough (promoted to a desk with no fax on it) I have no idea if it worked.

@SkokieGuy: Both questions are answered in the post. VOIP can redirect any incoming number to another number, i.e. not all calls are forwarded.

The re-direct occurs at the exchange so the receptionist won't receive either the originator number or the destination number, evil.

oh my god! That is Brilliant, simply genius!

I hope at some point they hook up a fax machine to see who's calling and someone can say..

"Oh my god! It's coming from INSIDE THE BUILDING!"

:p

BTW, brilliant. Nicely done. Now if only I could do that to the people who are calling my cell repeatedly to tell me I won a free vacation (for a $500 processing fee).

Pat rules.

@testsicles: Thank you for addressing my perhaps sloppy reading of the post.

So I now get that is not directing all calls, just the one inbound call from the evil faxing company, and they don't know who it is.

So I don't understand the comment at the end of the post about "Let's see how long it takes for them to remove that number now"? They don't know what number to remove, do they?

It 'punishes' the company, but does it accomplish anything else?

@rixatrix: That's interesting logic, except for a few things. One, if the company doesn't stop calling, it's harrassment and illegal. Two, it's not like he's sending it the receptionist's home number (like they're calling his), rather the work number where the receptionist is being paid and shouldn't really be miserable at all. Third, if it did make the receptionist's life miserable, then really what it shows is that even though it's the receptionist's job to handle these kinds of things, the receptionist thinks it's ok for them to make HIS life miserable, so shouldn't have any complaints.

So your parking spot example is wrong because taking the next spot takes some innocent person's spot. Instead, what if an employee of the business next to your home parks in your spot and the receptionist doesn't care, but you're able to convince the employee to park in the receptionist's personal spot instead? OP really isn't causing any problem, only redirecting it to someone more guilty.

I doubt there's any way to see a log of the call redirection, in order to have another laugh when you get it to stop. Maybe call the receptionist back in few days and ask if they want help tracking down the fax calls?

Bryanoak: your response isn't as sinless, read the post on statutory damages. Most junk faxes have a 'we may have gotten your number by mistake, here's how to correct' blurb (that's a complete lie) but it's there because profitability suffers when they get sued. If a company doesn't stop faxing, court judgments tend to get their attention quickly, and the cash in your pocket will make the whole experience more pleasant.

It's a viscerally satisfying story. But it may get the OP into legal trouble. In many states, it is illegal to initiate a call without intending to complete it -- That is, without intending to carry on a conversation. The law was drafted specifically to criminalize the use of wardialer software (software like what Matthew Broderick's character uses early in the movie War Games).

While redirecting a fax call at the exchange level is not precisely the same thing, it's very similar to what wardialer software does. It may well be illegal in the OP's state.

@lolababy: Seriously? Call forwarding has been around forever. VOIP, POTS, and cells all have call forwarding options.

This is the first instance I am aware of it being for a specific number, which is cool. You could always make sure important calls could find you, but telemarketers wouldn't be forwarded to your other number as well.

I very rarely, if ever, us my call forwarding, but I do pay enough attention to notice it listed as an option on every voice plan I have ever seen.

Either way at this poing we are well past the worry of abouse/misuse as most like every possible exploit of this feature has already been explored.

@akacrash: which is against the law...call them back and advise them of that and I bet you it will stop quickly.

@SkokieGuy: That I don't know. I imagine with some elbow grease, one could figure out which exchange and then get customer service and maybe get some information on the origin call. It would be funny if after days of work to get the number to stop, they finally figured out it was their own fax machine.

@SkokieGuy:

The OP isn't receiving the evil faxing company's spam faxes, so I'm sure the OP doesn't care anymore.

Many moons ago, I was bombarded with email from a Prodigy subscriber whose PC had been infected by a worm. Every time she connected to the Internet, I received a large batch of unwanted mail. I dutifully reported the problem to Prodigy's abuse handler several times over the course of a few days, but the junk kept coming.

I eventually got fed up, and configured my mail server to redirect the unwanted messages directly to the Prodigy abuse handler. "That should take care of it," I thought.

A few hours later, I got an extremely irate phone call from an upper-level manager at Prodigy. Apparently, what I had done was bad enough that he had already met with their Legal Department about me. He was furious, and he was going to make me pay.

If I recall correctly, I told him the messages were originating on his own network, told him what he could go do with himself, and hung up. The messages stopped bouncing off my server, and I never heard anything else about it.