Hello @Stewart1. The PBX is called VitalPBX. It’s not FreePBX system. I don’t know how to write any dial plan and I didn’t make any change of it.
Sorry I didn’t make it clear at first.
I think I can repeat the spam call situation now. I called the toll free number with my cell phone, I mute my call and after 10 second silence the vm will activate saying “press 1 to listen , press 2 to rerecord…” about four times before hanging up.
And I only receive a 1 second voicemail even I got a 1:30 bill.
The vm will stop recording after 10 second silence. I didn’t know that. I always make sound when I test recording the voicemail. So I always get a more than one second long voicemail recording.
About your three ways to mitigate the issue:
1, We prefer to use IVR to divert calls. This one doesn’t work very well.
2, I think pressing 7 to screen robot is a very good idea. I can put it before an IVR to block them.
3, Thank you for the suggestion of BulkVS. I will definitely take a look. Is the quality ok comparing to voip.ms? I am satisfied with voip.ms sound quality but I am very interested in to know more reasonable phone cost from different ISP. Also do you have any good CNAM lookup provider suggestions? I paid about $100-$200 CNAM lookup fee for voip.ms very month. I just found out that BulkVS charge $0.002 which is one fourth of voip.ms. I hope they provide similar quality. I will give it a try.
Thank you so much for your suggestions. They are very helpful. I really appreciate it.