So It's 4:00 a.m. and The Phone Rings...

...nearly every night lately! I roll over, pick it up and it's a fax machine, whispering sweet nothings in my sleepy, aggravated ear. BEEP BEEP BEEP! And once isn't enough I guess. The thing calls two of my three phone numbers, so I get disturbed twice each night. Oh, it's lovely! When it first started happening, I thought it was a fluke. Mistakes happen, I understand. But this is getting ridiculous. Grrrrrr...

Last night when it range for the second time, I had absolutely had enough. I got out of bed, walked to my office, got out the phone book (yes, I keep one of these relics around) and looked up the code for "Call Blocking". Yahoo! There it is! I gleefully hit *60, which is supposed to block the last number that called in. Except for one minor detail... it won't block out-of-area or "unknown" callers, which my mystery fax certainly is! DRAT! Back to square one. I try hitting *57, which is "Call Trace". I have visions of telephone company Men In Black, wearing sunglasses and waiting around the seedy phone company building to see who my mystery faxer is the next time he calls me. But the call tracing service won't work with unknown callers either. DOUBLE DRAT!

I call the phone company. Surely they can help! After a long conversation with two different people, the nice lady tells me that she can upgrade my voicemail so that it will accept faxes. Which means that when my mystery faxer calls again, the fax is supposed to get saved into my voicemail, where I can later retrieve it and print it out on my fax machine. It is my hope that when I do print it, there is a name and phone number on it, so I can contact them to tell them to take me off their list, or I'll be forced to take them to small claims court where I will be awarded $500 per unsolicitied fax call that they make to me. Woohoo free money! Hey, it beats delivering pizzas, right?

The lesson here is to get your number on the DO NOT FAX registry. But wait... it's not that easy. The Bellsouth lady gave me the number for the FCC to register my numbers with them, however, when I called, I couldn't find one voice prompt to lead me in the right direction. So I went to their web site and found the same thing. I was forced to email the FCC begging them to show me where the registry lives. I'll keep you posted...