Customer Reviews

Caller ID with Phone Ring Control - A Computer to Stop Unwanted Calls - Completed IT System to Control Phone Ring

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Unsolicited callers had pretty much rendered our land line useless. Now, when the phone rings, we don't mind walking over to the phone to answer it. This little device plugs in between the wall jack and phone and only permits callers on a list that you have input into the device's memory to get through. There are a couple things you need to be aware of before purchasing. The device only filters the phone/answering machine that it is connected to. I handle that situation in my household by disabling the ringers on all other phones in the house. Also, you can no longer see the caller ID number on the filtered handset. Instead, you have to look at the display on the device. Alternately, you can also elect to ignore numbers that you have input into the reject list. Unknown callers are dealt with by adding "000-000-0000" to the reject list. Ideally, 1-800 numbers could be rejected categorically by adding "800-___-____", but unfortunately, the designers of the device only let you wildcard the last four digits only. For this reason, along with the fact that it is a bit awkard to program, I can't give it a full 5 stars.

I have version 2 of this device which is improved with up to 70 Reject-list entries and up to
7 wildcard digits (which will cover almost all ranges you need to cover). I bought it because I got
sick and tired of my land-line being clogged with nuisance voice mails and I kept getting
calls from collection agencies for a person with a quasi-similar name but whom I didn't know.
Many of these were left by robo-dialers and when I called the 888/866 number to try to tell
them the person didn't live here I was typically put on hold for 30 minutes and then dropped.
Now I just put such callers in the Reject list and set it up (you have several options for
setup) so that when they call the phone doesn't even ring and they can't leave any messages.
But, the device is also useful to catalog your callers. Put friends in List-A (unrestricted) and
put business associates in List-B (you can regulate calling times). When the phone rings
the LED will light red for List-A, green for List-B, and orange for Reject-list. You can
just look across the room to see what type of call you are getting. The manual might be a
little cryptic but just read it carefully and you will see that everything works ok.

Mine was wired in between the wall jack and the Answering Machine/Base Station. The device receives calls and displays the caller id info but does not pass Caller ID information downstream to the Answer Machine/Base Station. So all the wireless handheld phones show is 'Incoming Call' and no Caller ID info even though all the info is on the Phone Ring Control device. I loved the interface, but I needed the caller id info to be passed on to the Answer Machine/Base Station for this to be useful.

I also tried it on a different jack by itself (no phone). I wish it would hang-up rather than filter the R list numbers to stop the call from still ringing on the Answering Machine/Base Station and other phones when installed on a dedicated jack. I had an old Radio Shack one that got fried in a power surge so I have been looking for a new one. This will not work unless there are some undocumented features in the microcode.

I use Vonage at home, and they don't provide the ability to create a list of numbers/people whose calls you never want to receive (blacklist them). Google voice offers such, but Vonage and ATT (for my cell phone) do not. I can't imagine why. It is like a junk mail filter for emails, but applied to the phone calls you receive based on their caller ID. This machine allows for that (plus some other features I do not care for), but is limited to some 20 phone numbers. Well, at least I can block the most annoying callers, and once they give up, I can renew that list with more of them. I wish they come up with a new machine that allows for many more numbers to be blocked. A draw back is that the caller ID does not reach my actual headset, it stops at this machine (it displays there, but not past it). The machine is between the wall and my headset.

As others mentioned, the user interface is quite poor, but can be figured out after a little bit of work. I order the unit that is suppose to support wild-cards, but the one I received does not No model numbers or defining marking on it. Since I don't know all the numbers of the people I don't want bothering me, all I know is that they start with 800 or 888 I can't block them, so I have no choice but enter all the numbers I do want to go through and block all others. Not the best option. (Actually I was contacted by the manufacturer to tell me that the blank spaces are wild-cards, not the asterisk (*) that would be expected. Still it shows a very pro-active manufacturer. )

Anyway, decided to keep it and enter the numbers since I figured there wasn't that many. Well just family and a few friends, home, cell and office numbers gets to be a lot, especially when entering each number requires the use of up or down arrows to scroll through number 0 through 9 to choose the value needed. Also, each number has 14 digits, the area code must be entered, and the typical 4 extra digit locations must be blanked out to work. Even that wouldn't be too bad but the up/down arrow buttons are poor quality so they are bouncy frequently causing the digit desired to be missed. Ever use a TV remote or calculator when the buttons were going bad? You got it. Also there are about 6 or 7 other keystrokes to get the needed number into the desired category of block, always through, or through at certain times.

Also the categories need to have the times to let calls through entered in one hour increments to 24 hours, otherwise it doesn't work.

Anyway after hooking it up and not entering my cell so I could try it, I called the house and it still rang one ring before blocking. Finally I was going to return it, but left it hooked up that night. The next day I needed to reach the house and dialed the number several times thinking the one ring would still be answered. Well it turns out that no ringing occurred. Somehow it had started to block all rings and not let the one get through, so I kept it.

Now with all that is bad about the unit, it does a GREAT job not letting the troubling calls through. I am sure this is made in someone's garage and larger companies won't touch the concept because of what it means, so if you want to get rid of those annoying marketers and survey takes and debt collectors, hook this up! Just be prepared to spend some time with it.

One interface aspect that was good was that when the call is block it shows up on a caller ID panel and with a couple keystrokes you can then save the number to the category you want it. That is a MUCH faster process.

Our phone has been so quiet now that I have checked it a few times to make sure it's working. The concept of what this does is great! Especially with all the markets using computer dialing now. This is pretty much indispensable. I will definitely not be without something like this again, but would gladly pay more for better quality, easier interface and more features.
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After using this for a month or so now I feel the hassle to get it set up is well worth it. Now when our phone rings I know it's someone I want to speak with and don't even bother checking the caller ID anymore. Once it's in and working this is really great to have.

I found this product via a web search. Products like this have come and gone over the years, all from small companies. Given the nature of what the product is for, it's no surprise that established electronics firms don't offer these essentially simple products. In this case the company is jftech.com, which may be a one-man band with production support. I bought this via Amazon in the hope of more customer help if it were necessary--no help needed so far, I am up and running.

This is the revised version of the product, some older reviews have some inaccurate information. Also, some reviewers elsewhere seem unaware of How Stuff Works: plugging this device in independently of a downstream telephone cannot help you. Storing numbers to block without comparative information for the box to decide what to block would be magic--the only source of comparative information is from the phone company's CallerID service.

Here are good features of this product:

* Stores 4 lists of numbers--
CallerID info for the last 100 calls, plus these three lists of numbers to use for comparison with CallerID info:
A: allow through anytime so the phone starts ringing (100 numbers);
B: do the same, but only during specified hours (100 numbers);
R: always silently block these numbers (70 numbers).

* Can be programmed to be really restrictive to accept calls from A and B lists only, but that would probably not work for most people.

* Very easy to move an entry from the box's CallerID list to one of A, B, or R.

* Wildcards (spaces for digits) in A, B, and R numbers can be used to manually block whole area codes (e.g., 877-___-____) or other batches of numbers.

* The phone never rings when a call is blocked (yaaaaay!).

* Callers do not hear anything weird while they are being handled by the box, even though CallerID info is received between the 1st and 2nd rings. Caller just waits a little longer (or forever if blocked).

But none of these boxes has ever been perfect. Here are some deficiencies in this product:

* It shows CallerID info on its display for the current call, and since the box is next to our base station it's available there for us. But if a call is passed through it does not send that info to the base station. This means our wireless remote handsets do not get CallerID data. I've traded email with the designer, he knows it could be programmed to send along the info as received from the phone company, but the software does not yet do that.

* The documentation takes a little study, and is also incomplete. I am finding out stuff from owner comments online (multiple sites) that may be of help to use this more effectively. For example, manually entering 000-000-0000 to the R list might block all unidentified callers, but since this is ill-defined using it will require some monitoring of the CallerID list.

* Wildcards don't work in the area code section, e.g., cannot block 9__-___-____.

I have not had this product for very long, but getting it functioning in basic mode has not been difficult. The major star loss comes from not sending through CallerID info, and the other star loss comes from inadequate documentation and lesser product mis-features. JFTECH, you know what you have to do!

Somedays I receive 50 calls a day from bill collectors mainly because my wife has been in and out of the hospital so the bills fall a little behind. Some of these collectors like Capital One have 25-30 different number, they will call 5 times a day using a different number every day.
I purchased this item because it had plenty of storage space. I found it tedious to program by keys and using the alphabet. I also accidently eraased the intire memory twice by hitting the "deleat" key at the wrong time when entering a number from the "Display Caller ID?" menu. I had to reprogram the entire list over. If you have one phone, one phone recorder and are very careful on programing this unit will work OK, If you have a phone in each room as I do and they are junctioned in the attic to the main phone line, you may have problems. I do have the Panasonic phone that blocks 30 numbers but in my case, that was not enought. the Panasonic works great except it lets one ring through but at least I know its a collector and I can shut the ringer off.

I have had this unit since mid September 2011, and it is a love-hate relationship. It is very primitive and not user-friendly. The manual is very basic, and is barely adequate. However, customer service is responsive. You probably will need to contact them. I love that once I was able to put my phone numbers into the proper registers, all the nuisance calls went away. But, I hated the way we have to enter the numbers, via a four arrow keypad.

After about six weeks the unit was not displaying all the incoming calls. I contacted customer service and their standard answer applies, "if you re-set memories, that problem will be clearn. Thank you for choosing caller ID with ring controller."

When you clear its memories, the unit forgets everything, and you have to start over and re-enter all the phone numbers and settings! I hate that! My question is, how often will the memories need to be cleared? Every month?, Every 6 weeks?

The only reason I haven't returned this thing yet is that it is still blocking junk calls. But the main reason is that I don't know of anything else like this unit on the market. I may still send it back.

I hope that JF Teck fixes the bugs in this thing and makes it more useable. I would like it to have a numeric keypad, and/or a USB connector so that the customer could program it on a computer.

I'd pay more for a unit like that.

However, I decided to clear it's memory and re-enter all the A-list phone numbers and settings. It took about an hour :-[ ! When I was done, the unit worked better than ever. I found that the first time I entered phone numbers, the unit did not recognize them because it's number field is 14 digits. The phone numbers I had entered were only 10 digits (Area Code + number). The remaining digits in the number field were zeros. That should be ok, right?

Wrong! If the number you enter is less that 14 digits, you must fill the remainder of the number field with spaces! (Not in the "manual")

Long story short, with a careful reading and re-reading of the manual, and some correspondence with Customer Service, I think that I have nailed it. I set it to only ring A-list numbers, and that is precisely what it does.

In order to get the maximum utility from this approach, you need to subscribe to caller id from the phone company. In addition, I have the phone company's voicemail (Verizon), which picks up and takes messages after 6 rings. Therefore, I can still get a message from callers who aren't on the A-list. Telemarketers seldom leave messages on answering devices.

Together with my home answering machine that picks up after 4 rings, I think I have my landlines under control. If you use this approach, remember that the ring blocker uses one ring to decide whether or not to let a call thru. Thus, the caller will hear one more ring than the answering machine gets.

We finally got all the numbers entered and added to the reject bank. One number is persistent and shows up as the NRA and of course it is a spoof name and number. So why does this machine NOT block it?

Next, family numbers that are on the "A" list now no longer ring. So what's up with this?

This products either needs refinement or maybe given over to the Asians for development and production. I so sick of this nation accepting mediocre products as acceptable. And we have the gall to make fun of others really?

Yes, I do understand percentages and some items do fail. So when I consider the overall family purchases and over 30% of the items bought are troublesome, defective or flat out POS, then I have to conclude that as a nation our production of quality products are in a steep decline and we are living an illusion based on our past era of excellence.

Anyone speak Mandarin... coming soon to a declining nation once known as the USA.....now $14Trillion in debt and counting....nice job leaders of a once great country.....

What the product description does not tell you is this: You need to subscribe to caller ID from your phone company just to use the call block feature. Nowhere does the description here say this. It truly is "buyer beware" with this product.