Steps for Verizon customers to unblock vaccine scheduling calls

A wireless company’s filter is blocking calls from Florida’s vendor for vaccine appointments, and people in Southwest Florida are frustrated as they wait to schedule their second dose.

Verizon told us the company took action on one number used by Florida’s vendor for scheduling appointments, and that phone number should stop going to voicemail without ringing.

This means the company placed a positive scoring adjustment on this number. It should no longer be marked as spam by Verizon. Verizon said, “Please keep in mind there may be other providers’ products, services, or devices that flag this number, which we do not control.”

The Company explained in a statement earlier:
“Verizon is a leader in working to aggressively fight annoying and intrusive robocalls and its Call Filter app has helped customers avoid more than 9 billion of these calls since its launch.”

That said, we are beginning to see healthcare facilities setting up new phone numbers and using them to make mass robocalls to alert people about vaccine-related information. In order to continue to be able to filter out harmful robocalls and allow these important calls to go through, healthcare providers should register with our spam analytics provider to ensure the phone numbers they’re using ring through. Numbers can be registered for free at www.reportarobocall.com.

In addition, Verizon customers can unblock these numbers by saving the number to their contact list or on the Call Filter App, they can add the number to the “Allowed Numbers” list.

Over the past few weeks, WINK News has received dozens of emails from Verizon customers saying their phones aren’t ringing and operators are being sent to voicemail.

Nicholas and Susanne Melfi are just two of those customers.

“It’s tremendously stressful,” they said. Susanne broke down in a crying fit. She didn’t want to mention that but that’s what we’re dealing with. “It’s really affecting our wellbeing, our health. It’s terrible. We’ve gone through so much. We were very grateful to get our first one. I’m just beside myself that we might not be able to get it.”

If you are experiencing this problem as a Verizon customer, Verizon offered two solutions:

First, find the number in your voicemail from the operator trying to schedule your vaccine appointment. You can either add the number to your contacts, just like you would any new phone number, or if you have the Call Filter app on your phone, open that, then tap Management. Under “Spam Filter,” tap “Allow Numbers List.” Then, type in the phone number and save it as something you know to pick up.

That may help the call through so you can schedule that critical second dose if you are still experiencing problems.