*67 incoming calls not connecting

[KhianaKlatt]

Hello Canadians!

You may have heard some chatter in other groups or on social media that when clients try to call in using *67 in Canada (to block their number), they are unable to reach us. Our office manager reached out to ST support regarding this as we were concerned this means we are missing out on leads and here is the information we received back: 

"Our provider checked this issue and called the number from their softphone and prefixed the call with *67 - the call completed, with the caller ID showing as 'Anonymous' (this test has been performed from the US number). It appears that the issue may be with the originating carrier (Canadian carriers such as Telus and Rogers) as the call is not reaching our provider's network, making us unable to perform any analysis. 

Ultimately and unfortunately, we are unable to take any action or verify details with the Canadian carriers. Instead, we recommend you reach out to respective providers for further investigation as there is nothing that we have visibility to and nothing that we can act on!" 

I can understand that a client may not want to share their phone number with us if it is their first time calling a company. Nowadays, we receive SO many marketing calls, emails and texts. They may want to protect their contact information until they have established a relationship with us as a company first. It is disappointing that the calls cannot connect to us and we are losing out on these leads as a result. 

Does anyone have any workarounds or solutions you have found to help with this? I would love to hear from you! 

[koiring]

We also have a few customers who have some kind of mask on their phone number who we discovered can't get through to us.  This became a huge issue during our cold snap when a client couldn't reach us.  We sent the issue to our ST rep and they did something in the background that hopefully fixed it - but I still don't trust that it fixed it for all customers or maybe just that one phone number.

[KhianaKlatt]

Do you know what ST did in the background to fix it? And do you know how they were blocking their number by chance? For example, was it *69 or did they use the iPhone setting to block their number? I'm curious. 

[koiring]

Me too, we still get the odd customer telling us that their calls are not going through.  Imagine all the ones who are not telling us...

[jshelson]

Telus and Bell no longer support *67 to any number from a cell phone, *67only works from a landline now. I do not have a landline to test *67 to ST but *67 from my cell to any number no longer works.

Instead, Rogers, Bell, and Telus now use #31#. #31# does work to call ST.

[KhianaKlatt]

Thank you. Yes, I knew some providers use #31# now instead of *67 however, we do have older clients who still use only a landline and they may try to call in using *67 to avoid receiving any marketing calls/scams in the future. Some clients are very hesitant to share information. So we are concerned we may be losing some potential leads due to this.

[MirandaMel]

Interesting...I just tried this and the calls do not connect for us.  It is not something I would have thought about.  I would also be curious if there are any tips or tricks.

[KhianaKlatt]

We have tested it as well with different networks! I know some older ones with landlines may use this so they do not receive marketing calls... so I would be curious a tip around this!