Coffee heat rising

NoMoRobo: FINALLY here!!!

Lo and behold! At the crack of dawn this morning I learned that Cox has finally broken through its inertia to make the NoMoRobo nuisance call blocker available to its customers.

Along about 6:45 this morning, the phone rang. Goddamned robocall. Worse yet, it went through, within a ring or two, to Cox’s accursed voicemail system, where the recorded blat is recorded and whence fucking Cox emits little bleeping lights to your phone, pestering you to go listen to the recorded ads.

Apparently this damn system has been in place for quite some time. WHY it suddenly decided to intercept phone calls before they ring though to my answering machine is an unanswered and apparently unanswerable question.

After some hoop-jumps, I get through to accursed Cox’s web page. And I also manage to reach a human being or three.

These worthies eventually clue me that I have to physically go onto the damned web page and physically disable the damned voicemail function. WHY this should suddenly be so was never explained. Why would they think I would want this “service” if I didn’t specifically ask for it?

BUT…along the convoluted way, one of them remarks that NoMoRobo would solve the nuisance call issue. I point out that Cox has steadfastly refused to implement NoMoRobo. He now says — admitting, finally, in so many words that their modem-driven connection we were all required to take on is, contrary to Cox’s claim, VoIP — that yes, as of the 15th Cox gave up and made NoMoRobo available to its victims customers.

DamNAYshun!!!

So forthwith it’s over to the NoMoRobo website — it takes all of about two minutes to sign up, if that long.

NoMoRobo has existed for several years; it won a contest sponsored by the FTC to persuade entrepreneurs to create programs or devices to block the 2.4 billion nuisance calls that bombard consumers every year. Cox, however, declined to make it possible to install.

I could get it on Ooma, but as long as I had copper land lines — that is, real land lines — I declined to switch over, because the hard-wired service continues to work through a power outage, which is not even faintly true of VoIP. So I’ve stupidly stuck with Cox, like a donkey in the traces.

It was good to get the NoMoRobo attached to the phone service. It’s free.

However, it was not so good to find my upcoming bill on the Cox website and discover the bastards have jacked up the base bill to $133 a month — a $16/month increase, slated to go up again in February.

So…I just got off the phone from Cox’s “loyalty” department (no kidding! 🙄) and got them to drop the rate back down to just two bucks more than they’ve been charging, for the next year. Very, very, very fuckin’ tired of this game!!

Anyhow, except for a call from Connie the Long-Haul Trucker and a reminder to pick up new glasses from Costco, the hated phone has been SILENT all day long! It’s kind of eerie, actually.