Why are my Elevate voice calls to cellular phones being marked incorrectly as "spam"?

We have recently discovered that certain calls from Elevate phone numbers to phone numbers of U.S. cellular carrier accounts are incorrectly being marked as SPAM. We have seen this issue with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, with AT&T being the most aggressive in marking such calls incorrectly. Our limited testing to Canadian cellular carriers and to land lines does not show the same issue.

Our testing also shows that this issue is not specific to Elevate. Accounts with other unified communications (UC) providers exhibit the same behavior, leading us to believe this is specific to UC providers.

This issue is caused by features cellular carriers use within their service networks that mark calls as SPAM, similar to how we tag our calls in Elevate. Currently, there is no universal method for opting out of the “scam lists” that mark calls as SPAM, as they are governed by separate private entities. However, many carriers do provide a method to report legitimate phone numbers being blocked or marked as SPAM. In addition, the major caller reputations services have a single website to register your number and dispute if it has been marked as SPAM.

Your first step is to report the issue with freecallerregistry.com (you must be on the phone when reporting to receive the verification code). The Free Caller Registry allows for a single submission to the three primary caller reputation providers who work with the major carriers. This can take approximately one week to complete.

In addition to the free call registry link, some carriers have their own method of reporting issues with phone numbers, as follows:

T-Mobile customers can report the issue at this link: https://callreporting.t-mobile.com/ This service allows the user to report one phone number at a time or submit a bulk list of numbers. T-Mobile requires that the person reporting the issue create a free account prior to reporting their issue.

Verizon provides instructions for reporting this issue at the following link: https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/homephone/calling-features/stop-unwanted-calls.

Under the “Spam Alerts” section, it advises the following: To report numbers that you believe should be listed as spam, or incorrectly labeled as such, please visit https://voicespamfeedback.com/vsf/

AT&T provides instructions for reporting this issue at the following link: https://www.att.com/reviewmycalllabel This will redirect to https://hiyahelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=824667 (the same reporting method as Google and Apple).

Google does not have a method on their website for reporting this issue. Please use the Hiya link mentioned earlier to report the issue: https://hiyahelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=824667

Apple does not have a method on their website for reporting this issue. Please use the Hiya link mentioned earlier to report the issue: https://hiyahelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=824667

Information about additional carriers and caller reputation providers can be found here.

We are working vigorously with the various carriers to resolve the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.