Imagine my shock when a "friend" dialed me back upon reaching his voice mail after I'd called using my MCI prepaid card and my number BLOCKED for privacy cell phone!!! (He wasn't privy to the number prior to that!)

After several attempts to reach MCI customer service number on the back of the card over two days I was finally able to reach a representative and was informed that their new policy as of this week is to show the number that is being called from (whether it's blocked or not).  This because too many people using their calling cards had complained they could not get through to people when the status showed the prior "unknown" status on people's caller ID!!

The representative said there were HUNDREDs of complaints that had caused the change, and MY complaint was the first they'd heard of in the reverse.  My statement that I was VERY LUCKY that the person I'd called was a friendly party and that it wasn't likely that people with blocked numbers would be warned by persons that had gleaned private information HOW it had been gotten seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Consider yourself warned.  I can't figure out other than give your business to ATT prepaid which, to my understanding just switches you through a trunkline in another state instead of showing your number right on the caller ID screen!!!

Hope it isn't too late for any of you out there that tested your MCI prepaid at the start, and then counted on them not to do something completly egregious such as this MID STREAM!

For those of you a customer service number ending in 4949 as  on the back of your MCI prepaid card, the prompt 1/2/2 will get you a LIVE person to voice your complaint.



-- Modified on 8/24/2003 6:57:27 PM

I am sure someone here knows more than I but here is what I believe to be true:

Call blocking on your number has no effect on calls made to toll free numbers such as 800, 888, etc.  I believe that the toll free numbers use a seperate system, which although similar to caller ID, is technically NOT caller ID, hnece the blocking has no effect.  Since, all of the prepaid calling cards that I have come across involve calling from such a toll free number, you have to assume that your calling number is being given out.  About the only thing they accomplish is saving you the hassle of having change at a pay phone, or keeping an outbound number off of a phone bill.

I do believe that this subject has come up in the past.

Good luck

First of all, acceptsgifts, it sucks that MCI did not have a recorded announcement or some other means of informing you that your number would be given out.  At least they should have a 'press 1 to block your number, etc' option. IMHO.

How I understand the callerid system works is:
your phone number is always sent as part of the connection.
when you call 911, 800, etc. numbers they get your number regardless of what steps you have taken to block it.
If you have blocking on your line there is a code sent out to prevent MOST callerid boxes from displaying your number.  If you are calling from out of the service area of your phone system there is also a code preventing this.

The reason I say MOST callerid boxes is that hacked or 'broken' boxes are available through the black market and back channels that display EVERY number coming in.

At least that is what I have been told.

Regards

--Marty

It used to come up as UNKNOWN on all of my caller ID phones (3-home, client line and cell line) when I cross-tested all of them.  Two phone companies.

You're certainly right about direct calling a 1-800 number. This doesn't mean a prepaid card should open a blocked privacy number to a caller ID line at the end of the line.

There are better options out there.  ATT prepaid uses one.

When my sister called me twice yesterday with her prepaid ATT card the first call showed as a number coming from Colorado, the second call showed as a number coming from Georgia.  She was actually calling me from Minnesota. This is an example of a prepaid card company redirecting a call through a trunkline in another state.

I have no way of knowing when MCI prepaid truly changed it's policy whether it was a week ago a month ago or what, but this is a NEW deal that calling through MCI prepaid is showing the number that you call from rather than showing UNKNOWN, OUT OF AREA or some other variation of a BlOCK.

You're right in saying it's always passed, but it's not quite that simple, actually.  The caller-ID box at the end of the line isn't responsible for, and doesn't, block out the caller ID.  Actually, there's a lot more smarts built in to the front end of the system than most laypeople really think about.

When you pick up your phone and dial, your PHONE isn't sending any data to anyone.  At the other end of the wire, the telephone company sees your line go "off hook", gives you dial tone, and waits for you to dial.  Whatever it is you dial, your local phone service provider goes to work on it, and the telephone switch your phone is connected to is really doing ALL the work.  It looks up your number in a database and determines what features you have, like caller-ID blocking.  It looks at the number you dialed.  If it's long distance, it looks in the database and determines who your default LD carrier is, and forwards the call on to them.  Through the call set-up with the LD carrier, the LD carrier must know your number (so they can bill you) but that is not the same thing as your caller-ID info being sent.  The LD carrier has access to several data streams from the local carrier including ANI and DNIS.  If the LD company wants to be "poopy butts" about it, they could take the ANI info that they get during call set up and repopulate any empty fields in the caller ID info as the call is being handed off to the far-end local carrier.  (Which sounds like what MCI is doing with credit cards.)  It is really up to your LD carrier, and the far-end local provider that serves your call's destination phone to help honor your blocked ID request.

If your call is to 911 or a toll-free number, your ANI info (essentially your caller ID) cannot be supressed and has to be passed along.

All these decisions--when caller ID is sent or blocked, which service provider the call is passed on to, whether it goes to your default intrastate or interstate LD provider, etc...  All these decisions are being made by your local telephone switch based on your record in the switch database.

I suspect that MCI is responding to complaints about cards being used to conceal identity, which really is illegal most of the time.  Caller-ID blocked or not, the receiving party of any call has a legal right to know who's calling, and this has been reinforced with stiff penalties in the new FTC telemarketing regulations.  The purpose of calling cards is to simplify the financial transaction and mitigate credit risk, not to create confidentiality, so the transgression that it appears MCI is making is not as bad as it may look to all of us who, well, were benefiting from the coincidental confidentiality while it lasted.