I have a customer who bought a phone system from me. He has locations all over the country that are forwarded to his local office. Somehow, all his nationwide numbers have wound up on a junk call list, and he literally gets hundreds of automated calls a day. I set up the Auto-Attendant to require a digit entry as a filter in order to ring into the office, but he gets so many calls that all the ports get tied up screening junk calls. He would need a huge VM system for a small office (5 Phones) just to handle the junk calls. What a waste! Are there any services that can screen calls and forward them once they are deemed legitimate? I'm open to ideas. Thanks.

You might consider routing the main number through something like grandcentral and then ring the voicemail after going through their system.
https://www.grandcentral.com/howitworks/spam_and_blocked

My customer went to that Grandcentral link, and said that it was not available yet. Is there a dial tone provider that has memory-call type boxes that will let you forward to another number by pressing a digit? There has to be some way to screen out these calls. These junk calls are killing this guy's business.

What do you mean by memory-call type boxes? Describe how it would work.

Bellsouth offers an answering machine type service called memory call. However, you can only leave messages. I need to be able to route back out of that box to the customers main line, leaving the junk calls behind and letting only legitimate calls through.

I know the Do Not Call Registry says it is for home and mobile numbers, I have had success with business numbers... It may take 30 to 45 days.

https://www.donotcall.gov/

commercial phone numbers may also be listed on the do not call registry. the down side to this is you do have to wait 30 to 60 days.

"Can I register my business phone number or a fax number?"
The National Do Not Call Registry is only for personal phone numbers. Business-to-business calls and faxes are not covered by the National Do Not Call Registry.


From the FTC site on Do Not Call registry.

Is there an update?????

Thanks for the suggestions. I solved the problem (somewhat) by programming all calls to first go to a screening box with a brief message to press 1 to continue. If they don't press 1, the EOM timeout goes to disconnect. Thus, each automated call ties up a VM port for only 10 seconds, instead of 30 0r 40 seconds when I had it cycling through the whole opening menu before dumping the call. Yes, it adds a step, but under the circumstances, it was the best I could do. My lesson- if a customer plans on forwarding hundreds of numbers to one location, be ready for hundreds of junk calls per day, and plan the system accordingly.

You can also record the SIT tone from a disconnected number ("Dee-DEE-DEET!") and put this on your primary greeting for a few weeks. Callers would have to know to wait through the tones, but automatic systems will automatically delete the number from their lists.

There's also a device that Sandman sells, which will do the same without the audible tones, so machines hang up but people don't.

Or he can change his MPN, but that's serious pain in the wazoo, reinform all of your callers, etc.