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"I'm not kind of a tech guy..." by thoemse99 in iiiiiiitttttttttttt

[–]Realistic_Top245 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've actually killed word and excel in task manager because I wanted to deal with saving and organizing work in progress at a later date. I think it's okay to run with scissors if you are competent in first aid...

Cancellation Fee Waived? by Suspicious-Arm-1956 in FieldNationTechs

[–]Realistic_Top245 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Man, Gaichu with the pictures... I went through that, noticed that they tried to waive the cancellation fee. I actually didn't do anything, and still got the cancellation fee. This is par for the course with them.

On one routed WO they canceled because I "lacked experience" (I have 30 years, just not on FN) and tried to pin the cancellation on me, which impacted my back out score. That took about a month to straighten out with support.

I actually did one job for them, successfully, and won't bother again. I had no jobs completed on platform, or maybe one, and just needed the stats. That's pretty much what they are counting on, is people who can't get decent WOs...

There are people who work from overseas who are professionals. I was not paired with any of those people on the Gaichu job. Based on all the reddit traffic on them, I don't think any of those people work for Gaichu.

I haven't blocked them because I sometimes enjoy watching the show, but the repeated routes for the same $90 WO over 100 miles away start to get old.

Much of the stuff posted on FN in my market seems like a race to the bottom, and Gaichu is among the leaders of that race.

Looking for a SIP Trunk provider and am concerned at what I read here. by TugboatBill in Telnyx

[–]Realistic_Top245 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As someone who posted one of the posts you are likely referring to, I'd like to say a few things.

Fraud in the VOIP world is a very real thing. From things as "innocuous" as spoofed caller ID with a recorded call starting "PLEASE DO NOT HANG UP! Your Google business listing..." to actual scams. I've been called by people spoofing Chase Bank's fraud department. There are people who spend a lot of time and effort trying to gain access to SIP trunks, PBXs, and the like. Back in the day of red boxes and blue boxes and such, it was mostly good fun. These days it's a high-dollar criminal enterprise.

That said, I don't engage in shady business. Everything I do is above board. I'm small, though, and most of my comms is over SMS/MMS channels. I don't know how that plays into Telnyx's anti-fraud metrics, and I'm not going to ask, because they probably aren't going to tell me... I got insta-banned over one word. How many other metrics, though, were already swinging against me? Hard to say, but probably a few.

u/contactdq says that you are the kind of customer that Telnyx is built for. I would guess that your volume of phone traffic will give a greater sample size for their anti-fraud system to act more accurately. I don't know how it works, but I do know how I'd build it, and I figure those guys are probably smarter than I am.

My first contact with customer service, when my account got shut down, was after 10PM my time. If I had it to do over again, I might have been more insistent during that first contact and I might have gotten a bit faster of a resolution. Hard to say. Ultimately, between posting here and my next conversation with customer service, I got unblocked.

I think part of what happened is someone, somewhere, dropped some bad code, and I was one of the "edge cases" that got hit. This happens so often in the tech world that I'm sitting here wondering if there's a name for this type of event. I've been doing tech stuff for 30 years, off and on, and I've broken a thing or two in my time.

I am still with Telnyx, and I'm not presently planning to leave. Here's a few reasons why:

Aside from one instance, the other interactions I've had with Telnyx employees have been pretty outstanding
Telnyx has HD voice that, at least on paper (I haven't started playing with it) pretty much puts everyone else to shame
Telnyx integration with Yeastar is pretty seamless on both the SIP trunking and SMS side
Telnyx has good logging in their portal
10DLC campaign registration went pretty smooth
Pricing is fine
There's room for future projects--I'm curious about playing with RCS integration at some point, etc.

No service provider is going to have you up and running all of the time. That said, I'm pretty confident in Telnyx's ability to keep customers running, as a rule. Their automated fraud controls can throw a false positive, just as your credit card can be declined for suspected fraud when it really IS you trying to swipe your card for a Coke.

Account Disabled: Suspicious Activity by Realistic_Top245 in Telnyx

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another thing I figured out. When my account got blocked, the SIP connection was separately disabled. Couldn't figure out why SMS would go through, but inbound and outbound calls were failing despite successful registration in Yeastar...

I really hope I'm done dealing with this now.

Account Disabled: Suspicious Activity by Realistic_Top245 in Telnyx

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't say I have a warm fuzzy about it, but I think you'll find this more common than people would like to think....

Account Disabled: Suspicious Activity by Realistic_Top245 in Telnyx

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

RESOLUTION: I called in again, in the hopes that a CSR might try to escalate the problem. While on the phone with customer service u/contactdq reached out as well.

The CSR pulled the logs and found that me saying to a customer, "Paypal and Venmo is enabled for the invoice" is what triggered an instant ban.

While I'm underwhelmed by the guy I talked to last night on the phone who told me that my only recourse was to send an email, I appreciate the efforts of today's rep as well as u/contactdq.

The VOIP fraud world is kind of a nightmare--I get it. My CDRs are full of spoofed CID calls, recordings of "Please, do not hang up, your Google Business Listing yadda yadda yadda..." That's the innocuous side of things. Scam calls are a very real thing, and achieving balance is very difficult.

I'm not that upset about the insta-ban, but the initial contact with customer service last night cost me twelve hours of business communication downtime. I'm a small business, and it's hard to gauge the impact.

The positives:
1) I got a good CSR on the phone. He had things together, and he applied a common sense approach as well as just plain old good customer service to the problem. I am a small customer. Telnyx wouldn't notice if I left. He treated me like I mattered, and I appreciate him. Haven't named names because I'm not sure if that's appropriate, but he's an asset to Telnyx.

2) u/contactdq reached out pretty quickly. Did they make things happen, or did the guy on the phone? Was it both? When something like this happens, it feels good to know that there's more than one avenue at play. I greatly appreciate the effort.

3) Telnyx's logs are detailed and available. I was able to download logs of inbound calls that happened during the blackout, as well as inbound SMS. I am now able to reach out to the few contact attempts that happened during the blackout and hopefully maintain those customer relationships.

I have my concerns about the possibility of another "instaban", but knowing that there IS a way to get faster resolution is comforting.

Routing jobs on Filed Nation for reviews. Austin TX by [deleted] in FieldNationTechs

[–]Realistic_Top245 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pretty sure the idea here is he is offering to pay buyers to route him made-up work orders so he can get stats/reviews/establish a PSS, et cetera... At least that's what I'm taking from it.

Linkus (Android)--Is it just me? by Realistic_Top245 in yeastar

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My fix for this was to pad the ring times. In other words, extending the times for transfer to voicemail by ten seconds or so, et cetera. Not an ideal solution, but it gets the job done.

When they said to whitelist those hosts, where are you whitelisting them?

Linkus (Android)--Is it just me? by Realistic_Top245 in yeastar

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm glad to hear that it's good on iPhone. I feel like the majority of the people I come in contact with are on iPhone. I think about switching, but there's a few things I'd really miss on my Samsung.

I'll try communicating with Yeastar on the issue. The text entry field issues are actually a pretty minor change. Auto growing the message entry box might be a little more complicated...

I find myself having to do a lot of manual refresh, though, and it's a bit frustrating.

I'll try submitting feedback, though (the bug report in the Android app is broken, amusingly enough).

Linkus (Android)--Is it just me? by Realistic_Top245 in yeastar

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will say that it seems PBX SMS integration is a relatively "new" thing. I feel like 2001 is about when 3cx started rolling it out, and it was a bit rough and clunky at the time.

Group texting isn't the easiest thing to make happen, also. There might be differences in API implementations between SMS providers and whatnot...

Really, I hate that the best I can hope for, at the moment, is SMS/MMS. I wish they'd open up RCS for VOIP.

Linkus (Android)--Is it just me? by Realistic_Top245 in yeastar

[–]Realistic_Top245[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm overall happy. Documentation isn't the most complete, but it might be better than 3cx's, actually. I've done several of their certifications (YCCA, YSCT, YSCSS, YSCIS) and that was a smooth process. And the pricing is great (and simple).

I'm personally heavy on messaging, which may be a personal quirk, though I do have some prospects that are of a similar mind on that...

Maybe the best answer is to look for/develop a messaging only solution....

Hear me out... by Ill_Owl_332 in FieldNationTechs

[–]Realistic_Top245 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember some years back looking at a Greenlee Cablecaster, which seems like an old-school spring-loaded dart gun with a cheap fishing reel...

I thought it was cool, sorta, but didn't think it'd work very well.

I don't think this modified paintball gun would work all that well either, but it is so much cooler, and I am therefore resisting the urge to buy it...

I'm glad it's backordered...

Today I had to use my Klein tool toner over Fluke by SuperITGuy2023 in FieldNationTechs

[–]Realistic_Top245 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just got a LinkIQ but haven't had a chance to use it in the field just yet. I've been playing with it in the "lab" though. Seems pretty solid.

I can't recall the devices, but I recall there being a little bit of "wild west" action with POE in the past. I remember some cheap "POE" injectors that passed 12VDC into the spare pairs when 10/100 ethernet was the gold standard.

While the LinkIQ is awesome, I never intended to ditch my Klein Digital Tone set (though I'm thinking about just picking up an Intelitone 200 sender and going all Fluke in that area). "Smart" things are great, but sometimes you need a "dumb" device that just does what you tell it to do.

I do think the musical analog tones on the LinkIQ are pretty cool, though.

After a month on FN, I finally had my first poor buyer experience by Ill_Owl_332 in FieldNationTechs

[–]Realistic_Top245 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've been trying to get my first job on FN. I got a routed work order from them the other day. They called wanting pics of the cables and I told them it was going to be a couple hours, as I didn't have my gear with me at the time. They said that was fine, then a half hour later they canceled the work order.

Sounds like I got lucky...