Bizarre toll-free routing issue
This is driving us nuts. We use Inetwork/Bandwidth/Dash to terminate SIP calls to toll-free numbers. About one out of every 50 calls results in something I have never seen before. The caller hears an IVR of a company other than the one dialed. After a few seconds, it skips to a different, totally unrelated IVR, then another, and so on. It seems to be related to load, occurs more often during peak calling hours, rarely if ever off-hours. We have never gotten connected to a live operator, only IVRs. The jump to a different IVR occurs after the initial greeting if we don't enter any DTMF. The numbers we've had problems with are: 866-841-0143 - AAA 888-792-4900 - Franchise Tax Board (CA) 800-627-8797 - Anthem Blue Cross 877-776-2436 - Drive Insurance I'm told that AAA and Franchise Tax Board terminate on AT&T and Anthem and Drive terminate on Verizon. Getting Inetwork to fix it results in, "An intermediate carrier that shall not be named" (Voldemort?) says that another downstream carrier says that the customer has equipment problems. Examples: Call to 8668410143 supposed to answer "Triple A" went to Pacific Western Sales, jumps to ATT, then Child Support Division of the Office of Attorney General, then Free 411 then Comcast over the 1 minute 51 second duration of the call. 8006278797 duration 1:40, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Employment Development Department then Classic Vacations. 8006278797 duration 2:28, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Citicard then S.M.U.D. This is tough to troubleshoot. It takes multiple calls to replicate as the vast majority go through without issue. Most of our customers just assume that they mis-dialed and try again. Where we become painfully aware of it is when a customer has one of these numbers on speed-dial and it becomes obvious that it isn't a mis-dial. Has anyone else on the list run across this? Other than "Don't use Inetwork", any ideas on getting it fixed? My fear is that it may not be Inetwork but something beyond them, perhaps the companies involved outsource their call centers to a common hosted service that is having issues.
Have you tried playing the IVRs backwards to find the secret message? :) David -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Jay Hennigan Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 11:42 To: VoiceOps Subject: [VoiceOps] Bizarre toll-free routing issue This is driving us nuts. We use Inetwork/Bandwidth/Dash to terminate SIP calls to toll-free numbers. About one out of every 50 calls results in something I have never seen before. The caller hears an IVR of a company other than the one dialed. After a few seconds, it skips to a different, totally unrelated IVR, then another, and so on. It seems to be related to load, occurs more often during peak calling hours, rarely if ever off-hours. We have never gotten connected to a live operator, only IVRs. The jump to a different IVR occurs after the initial greeting if we don't enter any DTMF. The numbers we've had problems with are: 866-841-0143 - AAA 888-792-4900 - Franchise Tax Board (CA) 800-627-8797 - Anthem Blue Cross 877-776-2436 - Drive Insurance I'm told that AAA and Franchise Tax Board terminate on AT&T and Anthem and Drive terminate on Verizon. Getting Inetwork to fix it results in, "An intermediate carrier that shall not be named" (Voldemort?) says that another downstream carrier says that the customer has equipment problems. Examples: Call to 8668410143 supposed to answer "Triple A" went to Pacific Western Sales, jumps to ATT, then Child Support Division of the Office of Attorney General, then Free 411 then Comcast over the 1 minute 51 second duration of the call. 8006278797 duration 1:40, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Employment Development Department then Classic Vacations. 8006278797 duration 2:28, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Citicard then S.M.U.D. This is tough to troubleshoot. It takes multiple calls to replicate as the vast majority go through without issue. Most of our customers just assume that they mis-dialed and try again. Where we become painfully aware of it is when a customer has one of these numbers on speed-dial and it becomes obvious that it isn't a mis-dial. Has anyone else on the list run across this? Other than "Don't use Inetwork", any ideas on getting it fixed? My fear is that it may not be Inetwork but something beyond them, perhaps the companies involved outsource their call centers to a common hosted service that is having issues. _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.
Interesting. Never saw that one before. But I have seen situations where the far end's voicemail/IVR/conference bridge has misbehaved similarly when the call has been deflected. That is, when we send a Diversion header. Any such commonality here? Your last On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Jay Hennigan <jay at west.net> wrote:
This is driving us nuts. We use Inetwork/Bandwidth/Dash to terminate SIP calls to toll-free numbers.
About one out of every 50 calls results in something I have never seen before. The caller hears an IVR of a company other than the one dialed. After a few seconds, it skips to a different, totally unrelated IVR, then another, and so on. It seems to be related to load, occurs more often during peak calling hours, rarely if ever off-hours. We have never gotten connected to a live operator, only IVRs. The jump to a different IVR occurs after the initial greeting if we don't enter any DTMF.
The numbers we've had problems with are:
866-841-0143 - AAA 888-792-4900 - Franchise Tax Board (CA) 800-627-8797 - Anthem Blue Cross 877-776-2436 - Drive Insurance
I'm told that AAA and Franchise Tax Board terminate on AT&T and Anthem and Drive terminate on Verizon.
Getting Inetwork to fix it results in, "An intermediate carrier that shall not be named" (Voldemort?) says that another downstream carrier says that the customer has equipment problems.
Examples: Call to 8668410143 supposed to answer "Triple A" went to Pacific Western Sales, jumps to ATT, then Child Support Division of the Office of Attorney General, then Free 411 then Comcast over the 1 minute 51 second duration of the call.
8006278797 duration 1:40, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Employment Development Department then Classic Vacations.
8006278797 duration 2:28, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Citicard then S.M.U.D.
This is tough to troubleshoot. It takes multiple calls to replicate as the vast majority go through without issue. Most of our customers just assume that they mis-dialed and try again. Where we become painfully aware of it is when a customer has one of these numbers on speed-dial and it becomes obvious that it isn't a mis-dial.
Has anyone else on the list run across this? Other than "Don't use Inetwork", any ideas on getting it fixed? My fear is that it may not be Inetwork but something beyond them, perhaps the companies involved outsource their call centers to a common hosted service that is having issues.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
We had this same problem with Bandwidth.com/INet and let it ride out for 2 days while they tried to 'fix' the problem. We eventually just started routing our traffic to another carrier. -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Jay Hennigan Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 12:42 PM To: VoiceOps Subject: [VoiceOps] Bizarre toll-free routing issue This is driving us nuts. We use Inetwork/Bandwidth/Dash to terminate SIP calls to toll-free numbers. About one out of every 50 calls results in something I have never seen before. The caller hears an IVR of a company other than the one dialed. After a few seconds, it skips to a different, totally unrelated IVR, then another, and so on. It seems to be related to load, occurs more often during peak calling hours, rarely if ever off-hours. We have never gotten connected to a live operator, only IVRs. The jump to a different IVR occurs after the initial greeting if we don't enter any DTMF. The numbers we've had problems with are: 866-841-0143 - AAA 888-792-4900 - Franchise Tax Board (CA) 800-627-8797 - Anthem Blue Cross 877-776-2436 - Drive Insurance I'm told that AAA and Franchise Tax Board terminate on AT&T and Anthem and Drive terminate on Verizon. Getting Inetwork to fix it results in, "An intermediate carrier that shall not be named" (Voldemort?) says that another downstream carrier says that the customer has equipment problems. Examples: Call to 8668410143 supposed to answer "Triple A" went to Pacific Western Sales, jumps to ATT, then Child Support Division of the Office of Attorney General, then Free 411 then Comcast over the 1 minute 51 second duration of the call. 8006278797 duration 1:40, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Employment Development Department then Classic Vacations. 8006278797 duration 2:28, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Citicard then S.M.U.D. This is tough to troubleshoot. It takes multiple calls to replicate as the vast majority go through without issue. Most of our customers just assume that they mis-dialed and try again. Where we become painfully aware of it is when a customer has one of these numbers on speed-dial and it becomes obvious that it isn't a mis-dial. Has anyone else on the list run across this? Other than "Don't use Inetwork", any ideas on getting it fixed? My fear is that it may not be Inetwork but something beyond them, perhaps the companies involved outsource their call centers to a common hosted service that is having issues. _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
TF routing can actually be extremely complex, and the key to what's going on is usually the RESPORG as they can see (and control) what carrier the calls hit, over what trunks, and when. Things can in fact change based on load, originating carrier, TOD, outages, multi-carrier load balancing, etc. One problem is it's the "owner" (RESPORG's end customer) of the TFN that the RESPORG usually will talk to about this, so if it is a routing issue you'd probably have the best luck if you can get a contact on the dialed end. If it turns out the routing is simple, they you just have to push from your side out until you find out where the problem is happening and why. Perhaps they have bad trunks to a specific carrier or some TNs provisioned locally that shouldn't be (or the next guy does). If the routing is complex, then you have to find out in which cases the calls are failing and see if that provides a hint. Sometimes the RESPORG will be willing to make a change to help you troubleshoot. That said, if this is a common occurrence on a specific origination carrier you are using, there is probably a bigger issue to address and you might try correlating multiple cases together and hoping their engineers can find the commonality once you get a ticket escalated. Good luck, -Scott -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Jay Hennigan Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 2:42 PM To: VoiceOps Subject: [VoiceOps] Bizarre toll-free routing issue This is driving us nuts. We use Inetwork/Bandwidth/Dash to terminate SIP calls to toll-free numbers. About one out of every 50 calls results in something I have never seen before. The caller hears an IVR of a company other than the one dialed. After a few seconds, it skips to a different, totally unrelated IVR, then another, and so on. It seems to be related to load, occurs more often during peak calling hours, rarely if ever off-hours. We have never gotten connected to a live operator, only IVRs. The jump to a different IVR occurs after the initial greeting if we don't enter any DTMF. The numbers we've had problems with are: 866-841-0143 - AAA 888-792-4900 - Franchise Tax Board (CA) 800-627-8797 - Anthem Blue Cross 877-776-2436 - Drive Insurance I'm told that AAA and Franchise Tax Board terminate on AT&T and Anthem and Drive terminate on Verizon. Getting Inetwork to fix it results in, "An intermediate carrier that shall not be named" (Voldemort?) says that another downstream carrier says that the customer has equipment problems. Examples: Call to 8668410143 supposed to answer "Triple A" went to Pacific Western Sales, jumps to ATT, then Child Support Division of the Office of Attorney General, then Free 411 then Comcast over the 1 minute 51 second duration of the call. 8006278797 duration 1:40, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Employment Development Department then Classic Vacations. 8006278797 duration 2:28, was supposed to be Anthem but answered with Wells Fargo, then skipped to Citicard then S.M.U.D. This is tough to troubleshoot. It takes multiple calls to replicate as the vast majority go through without issue. Most of our customers just assume that they mis-dialed and try again. Where we become painfully aware of it is when a customer has one of these numbers on speed-dial and it becomes obvious that it isn't a mis-dial. Has anyone else on the list run across this? Other than "Don't use Inetwork", any ideas on getting it fixed? My fear is that it may not be Inetwork but something beyond them, perhaps the companies involved outsource their call centers to a common hosted service that is having issues. _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
participants (5)
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David.Hiers＠adp.com -
gmina＠connectfirst.com -
jay＠west.net -
peeip989＠gmail.com -
scott＠sberkman.net