Problem With Callcentric Incoming Caller ID

[BearJerCares]

I have set up an Obi 100 using Google Voice, plus I have set up an additional incoming phone number with Callcentric.com for the purpose of being able to have 911 service and caller ID.  Everything is working well except I have a hit and miss problem with Callcentric's caller ID - it only shows the NAME about half the time.  I submitted a ticket to Callcentric and submitted my Obi configuration screenshots to them, but so far they have not been able to diagnose the problem.  Furthermore, they say that I am only paying $1.50 for 911 service and they make no guarantees that the caller ID service will come across with their "free" phone number.   Is anyone else using Google Voice and Callcentric with the Obi having issues with caller ID such as this and do you know if there is a setting in the Obi that could be tweaked to help alleviate the problem?  Thank you,  Jerry in Michigan / BearJerCares@gmail.com

[BobTeatow]

I've had callcentric and Obi and google voice for more than a year.

But I just recently started using my free callcentric DID as the target phone for my google voice in coming calls.
I did this exactly so I would get CallerId and NAME.

So far it pretty much works as expected.

As with the other phone companies, Callerid/Name is not 100%. 
More like 95% for numbers and 50-90% for names DEPENDING who is calling you from what kind of service.

With more than 1/2 my calls coming from cell phones, the best you get when receiving a cell phone call is
"Cell Phone - <name of state>" 
I wonder why, since most cell phones are post-paid phone registered to a particular name, why don't the cell companies cooperate with caller-name?  But they don't.

BUT there is a cool Callcentric feature - you can put names and phone numbers into an online "phone book" associated with your Callcentric account - then whenever an inbound caller-id NUMBER "hits" on your personal phone book, Callcentric over-rides the calling name provided by the other phone company and instead, of course, send the name you specified in your personal callcentric phone book.

There is a way to import/export phone books as simple spreadsheets...
And/Or you can can review your incoming calls on callcentric "report" and work with that...

[MikeHObi]

I rarely get incoming calls at home but wife gets them frequently and today she told me that calls have been coming up as Private for the last 1 and 1-/2 week.  I checked on my CallCentric Dashboard and found that calls showing up as private are showing as Anonymous on call centric's system.  I suspected a problem with Google Voice so I switched voice to route to my secondary VOIP provider Anveo.  Calls through Aveo properly showed numbers and would give names as well.  Switched back to Callcentric and still having the problem.
I opened a ticket with Callcentric to see if they can figure out what is going on.  I'll report back what I find, for now I'll switch to having Anveo handle calls for a while.

[JustinS]

MikeHObi, I am having the exact same problem you described.  My CallCentric call log started showing all calls as anonymous around noon eastern time on Friday, Sept 27th.  It's been two days now.  Please keep us posted on what CallCentric says when they resolve or close your ticket.

[MikeHObi]

Here is the results of the ticket and talking.

Problem is not CallCentric and is Google.  Calling my GV number forwarded to the Free NY DID from my Cell phone I get Anonymous on the call log at CallCentric.  Calling my Free NY DID number directly from my cell phone I get CNAME and CNumber from the phone book entry I have at Callcentric. 

Call Centric verified this information in their reply to the trouble ticket, if they get nothing on the incomming that what gets sent out.

For now I'm routing GV through Anveo as I get CNAME through that as well.  I'm going to figure out how to tell Google they have a problem with their 914-662 numbers not getting the calling number reliably.

Note, it has been somewhat random in that everyonce and a while CNUmber would get through.  But more often than not it didn't.

[JustinS]

I'm pleased to report that the caller ID issue is resolved.  It started working again.  I temporarily switched to having the Obi100 receive my Google Voice calls directly through Google Chat, which provided number-only caller ID.  I then switched back to forwarding my Google Voice calls to CallCentric, and the caller ID is once again working.  Google must have resolved the issue on their end.

Let's hope it stays working.

[VOIPisGreat]

I have also been getting the problem of callcentric showing Anonymous, while on the GV call log it shows the correct number. The occurrence is random, sometimes the same number will show on callcentric while some other time it'll appear as anonymous.

[gmercator]

I have also been having this exact problem off and on.

First time was from about Sept 23 - Sept 26.  It started happening again on Oct 9 and is still happening as of Oct 13.

My setup:  obi 110

SP1:  GoogleVoice for free outbound

SP2:  Callcentric free NY DID number for outbound 911 and designated as inbound destination number for GoogleVoice.  Inbound calls made to my GV number are directed to SP2's Callcentric NY DID number, where a match is made to my Callcentric directory and the Caller ID name field for that call shows my customized listing.... this has been an absolutely perfect setup.. very low cost and reliable..... until about a month ago.

Suddenly inbound calls were listed in the GV call log correctly and showing Caller ID, but when those calls reached Callcentric, the Caller ID number had been stripped off, leaving "anonymous" in its place.

In my limited testing, the problem was with calls made FROM Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile cell phones... this anomaly happened over and over when tested from either of these cellphone providers. In addition, when these 2 cellphones (one from VZW, one from T-Mobile), were set to ring as destination numbers in GV, and calls were placed to the GV number from a third (VZW) cellphone, both the VZW and T-Mobile cellphones received the Caller ID from GV while Callcentric did not (and showed anonymous).

I do not have access to any AT&T or Sprint cellphones to test.

I did not submit a support ticket to Callcentric since there are so many providers in this equation.... all VZW or T-Mobile calls made directly to my Callcentric NY DID showed perfect Caller ID, but those same calls routed through GV showed anonymous, both in the Uniden home phone Caller ID display, and in the Callcentric call log on the Dashboard page

Have any of you guys (or gals) had anonymous calls show up from GV to Callcentric that were made from a different provider than Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile

For now, I have inbound calls ringing on SP1 using GoogleChat, which shows number only, of course.

Thanks for any ideas or help to get this solved.

Additional testing info:

I just used the GV "web-trigger" callback option where you can type in the number you want GV to call when signed into your GV account on the computer and have it call you back on one of your verified phones....

When my Callcentric NY DID was chosen as the number for GV to call me back on to setup the outbound call..... the calls came in as "anonymous".... these calls did not involve any other GV destination phones since the dropdown box is specific to have GV call back on the one number that is chosen..

Again, thanks for any help or ideas

[VOIPisGreat]

It seems to me that the problem occurs regardless of the source. I have had calls with this problem from both landlines and cell phones.

[gmercator]

@VOIPisGreat... Thanks for your reply.  Is your CallCentric number one of the Free NY DID's or a paid CallCentric DID?

AFAIK, the free NY DID's use CallCentric's in-house CLEC, Telengy.  The paid DID's use other CLECS which may be much larger providers that have USA and international coverage.

As an experiment to change up the equation, I signed up for and added one of CallCentric's "Dirt-Cheap" DID's for $2.95/mo.  It uses XO Communications as it's CLEC instead of Telengy.  I verified it with GV and am now using the Dirt Cheap DID as the GV destination number.  It still rings into my obi 110 on SP2 since it is on the same CC account.  So far, every inbound call made to the GV forwarded to the new DID has shown the proper Caller ID.  I will monitor this to see if that fixes the problem or not....

Thanks for any help or other ideas

[VOIPisGreat]

I have the free NY DID.

Please keep us posted if the paid account resolve your issue. Thank you.

[gmercator]

Ongoing followup:

2 days ago, Oct 14, I added a CallCentric "Dirt-Cheap" DID for $2.95/mo to my CallCentric account.

I had been using a Free NY DID as the GV destination number prior to this, but have experienced many incoming calls in the last month with "anonymous" Caller ID sent from GV to the Free NY DID number.

Adding the Dirt-Cheap CallCentric DID had the effect of changing the CLEC from Telengy (NY DID) to XO Communications (for the DirtCheap DID that I was assigned).

I just conducted another very limited experiment.

I made a total of 4 test calls from a Verizon Wireless cellphone.

I toggled back and forth in the GV settings between sending the calls to the Free NY DID or the DirtCheap DID

Each of the calls sent to the Free NY DID (Telengy CLEC) showed the proper Caller ID in the GoogleVoice Call Logs, but showed "anonymous" in the CallCentric Call Logs and in the Caller ID display of the Uniden corded phone.

Each of the calls sent to the DirtCheap DID (XO Communications) showed the proper Caller ID in the GoogleVoice Call Logs, and also showed the proper Caller ID (including the matched name in my CallCentric personal directory).

I also noticed that the DirtCheap DID calls rang immediately on the Uniden corded phone, but there was a 1-2 ring delay before the Uniden phone started ringing on calls from GV forwarded to the Free NY DID.

I am keeping the DirtCheap DID number for now.

I really like a reliable, low-priced solution.  Sometimes the aggravation of time spent troubleshooting a Free service can get to be too much.

I have not put in any trouble tickets for this at CallCentric, as I am not sure if they have any control over the missing Caller ID on calls forwarded from GV.

I did find a posting in the GoogleVoice support group that I am almost sure reflects the same GV to CallCentric Free NY DID problem (after doing a search for the word "anonymous")

There normally has to be a huge number of identical complaints in the GV forums for someone to identify the problem properly and grab the attention of any sort of tech support that Google may have..... good luck with that....

If anyone notices any other strange behaviors with the Free NY DID's, please let us know here.

I will report back again later if I notice any other issues with these GV to CallCentric DID calls.

Thanks

[VOIPisGreat]

Thanks for the investigation, please let us know if there's any update.

[carl]

While I consider caller ID important, I am fine if it works in 90% of all cases. In the world of spoofed DID's I am not going to make myself crazy about this issue or spend extra money on it.

[VOIPisGreat]

Are you having this issue or not?

By my observation it used to work 100% until recently. Now it's really unreliable, nowhere close to 90% as you quoted.

While I consider caller ID important, I am fine if it works in 90% of all cases. In the world of spoofed DID's I am not going to make myself crazy about this issue or spend extra money on it.

[carl]

It's working now.

[VOIPisGreat]

It's working now.

Good for you, but I'm still having issues.

[powaking]

I'm having the exact same problem. It was working fine up until this weekend.  If I call my callcentric line directly then I get proper cname. If I call my GV which then forwards to CC then I get PRIVATE CALLER instead.  In my CC logs it shows Anonymous as being received.  I have not filed a ticket with CC yet.

[powaking]

Received the following from CC support:

Hello,

We checked the trace logs for one of the calls and noticed the following:

Remote-Party-Id: <sip:########@xxxxxxxx;user=phone>;party=calling;id-type=subscriber;privacy=uri;screen=yes


In particular the "Privacy=uri" portion which indicates that the call is being sent to us anonymous and we should not pass the caller ID information for the call. As per the SIP RFC our servers are then stripping the CID information when sending it to your device. This is beyond our control, Google needs to change or remove the privacy flag in order for the call to be forwarded with caller ID information.

If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us at any time, thank you.

[SteveInWA]

See this similar discussion:

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=3640.msg43621#msg43621

If enough people who have paid and free CC DIDs would open tickets and insist that CC look into why their free and paid DIDs handle CID differently, then maybe CC will fix it on their end.  Google is going to take a look at it, as of today, but I think it would be more productive if CC figured out what's different on their side.

I would call BS on CC unless they produce a similar log for an inbound call to a paid DID.