said by NetFixer:... There is no legitimate reason for anyone to block their name and/or telephone number from displaying in the called party's Caller ID display...
Think outside the box ... put yourself in someone else's position rather than thinking only about your personal usage and needs.
In my forty years of medical group practice,
before call blocking, I would have a need to return nighttime or weekend urgent/emergency patient calls from my home phone ... on my "on call" days/nights (one of every four weekdays MON-THU and one of every four weekends FRI-SAT-SUN), given that we were a group of four doctors. Well-intentioned patients would tend to jot down my home number ... and weeks or months or even years later would call me in the middle of the night at home ...
on a night when one of my partners was taking call.In response, I would use #67 for one-time outgoing CallerID Blocking when returning patient calls. This became problematic because many folks had "anonymous" calls permanently blocked on their end, thus my call would not go through. So I developed a plan wherein, if my return call was blocked, I would call my answering service and have them call the patients to give them 5 minutes to unblock "anonymous" Call Blocking ... and then I would call the patients back (with my number still blocked).
With my eventual switch to all-VoIP/Cellular ... I no longer have landlines in my NJ and FL homes, just VoIP and Cellular ... I have solved the problem very nicely. I have a basic Pay-As-You-Go 99¢ per month phone number from Voip.ms which forwards incoming calls to "silly" terminations (see below) so
I can call out but they can't call in. And when I'm away from home, I have the DISA on the same account set to recognize my cell phone number, providing a second dial tone through which I can dial the patient's number, enter my PIN, and show my Voip.ms number as the CallerID. At a penny per minute plus the 99¢ monthly charge (with no add'l taxes, surcharges, E911 fees), my costs are minimal on an
annual basis ... ~$12 for service + ~$5.00 for ~500 minutes =
~$17.00 for the entire year!
So if a patient or other unwelcome callers call my Voip.ms number (especially now that I'm retired), they are forwarded to one of the following:
• 631-265-0000 Pay Phone message "The call you have made requires a coin deposit..."
• 218-488-1302 Psych Hot Line
• 631-360-0000 Hold for Physician
• 973-474-9051 Telemarketers Nightmare
• 212-757-9901 No LD Carrier Designated
• 360-515-4462 Screaming Monkeys
Note: These numbers may not be reachable from all carrier's phone numbers.