What about spam calls?

A robocall that reaches a per-minute service costs you a few cents. On a per-call plan that counts every answer, the same call takes a full call from your allowance, which is why we don't count robocalls at all.

Volume matters here. A business number published on a website collects far more automated calls than a number that is not indexed anywhere.

None of this is unique to AI. Your old voicemail was collecting the same calls, you just were not billed per message.

At the carrier. Most carriers and VoIP providers offer some spam labeling or blocking, and turning it on before the call is forwarded is the cheapest filter available.

At the attestation layer. STIR/SHAKEN attaches a signed attestation to a call indicating how confident the originating carrier is about the caller ID. A low attestation on an unknown number is a reasonable signal to treat the call differently.

In the conversation. A call with no speech, or with a recorded message playing into it, can be ended quickly by a rule rather than being talked at for a minute.

On your own listings. A number published as plain text on a website gets harvested. Some businesses use a separate published number precisely so they can watch what arrives on it.

Say you run a dumpster rental company and 260 calls reached the assistant last month. Reading through the transcripts, you find 45 of them were junk: silent lines, a recorded pitch about your business listing, a warranty scam. On a per-call plan that counts every answer, that's 200 included plus 60 at $0.45, so $76.

With us, robocalls and very short calls don't count toward your plan, so you're billed on the 215 real ones: $55.75. The difference is $20.25 for the month, about a quarter of the larger invoice. You still paid for the junk in another way, because 45 transcripts is a lot of noise to skim past.

The fix sits upstream. Your carrier's free spam protection (AT&T calls it ActiveArmor, T-Mobile has Scam Shield, Verizon has Call Filter) blocks likely scam calls before they ring your line. A call blocked there never forwards, so it never reaches the assistant and never lands in your summaries. You switch it on, and next month the junk count falls to a dozen.

To estimate spam on your own line, sort last month's call log by duration. Junk clusters at the bottom: calls under ten seconds from numbers that never appear twice. Another tell is a number sharing your own area code and first three digits, a spoofing trick meant to look local.

Go easy on the strongest settings. Most carrier tools offer levels, and the top one often blocks every anonymous or unknown caller. That can catch real customers. Hospitals, doctors' offices and some corporate switchboards show up as private numbers, and a property manager phoning from a desk line may too. Blocking high-risk calls and labeling the rest is the safer starting point.

Check again after a month, and look both ways: whether junk still gets through, and whether your carrier's blocked-call list contains anyone you recognize.

Put one question to every vendor when comparing plans: does a robocall count against my allowance? With us it doesn't. Very short calls, robocalls and calls the assistant screens out don't count toward your plan. We still point you at carrier blocking first, because it keeps the junk out of your summaries. Any vendor who says spam is free should be able to explain how they tell the difference, and our pricing page has that table.

Silence and non-responsive calls follow the rule you set, and the sensible one is a single prompt then a polite end rather than a long wait.

Every call arrives as a transcript, including the junk, so you can see what is actually reaching the line rather than guessing at it.

Very short calls, robocalls and calls the assistant screens out don't count toward your plan, so junk costs you reading time rather than allowance. The pricing page has the table of what counts.