36 Robocalls Hit My Business Line In 72 Hours

By Ryan Nichols

My business line took 36 robocalls in three days.

Not 36 calls. 36 calls from the same campaign, using at least 35 different phone numbers, all in one area code.

And here is the part that stung.

My own AI receptionist answered them. Politely. Seventeen times.

A robot introduced itself to a robot, on my number, on my dime, while I was building something else.

I am publishing the whole thing because every small business owner in East Texas is getting these exact calls this week, and almost none of them know they can shut it off in about five minutes.

---

The plain English version

A robocall campaign is dialing small business numbers from a rotating pool of local looking numbers.

The recording tells you that customers cannot find your business.

Then it asks you to press 1.

If you have any kind of AI answering service, that AI picks up, starts a conversation with a recording, and burns your paid credits doing it.

If you do not have AI answering, it still eats your day, one interruption at a time.

The fix is not blocking numbers. Blocking does not work on this, and I will show you why.

---

Why this matters more than the money

RYAN STATEMENT. The credits are the small loss.

The real loss is what a customer hears.

My whole offer is no missed calls, no missed texts, no missed revenue. That is the promise on the bottom of every page I own.

So picture a business owner who reads something I wrote, decides he likes it, and calls the number.

And a robot says "Ryan just missed you."

That is the opposite of the pitch, in my own voice, delivered by my own system.

Read that again.

I sell phone systems and my phone system told my prospects I was not there.

I am not going to write around that. I am going to publish it, fix it, and show you the fix, because that is worth more to you than a testimonial.

---

The receipt

Everything below came out of my own call logs. Recorded, transcribed, timestamped.

FACT. 28 recorded incoming calls to my business line between 2026-08-24 and 2026-08-26. Every one matches the same campaign. Not one real customer in the set.

FACT. 8 more hit as missed. Zero seconds. No voicemail. All rotating numbers in the same area code.

FACT. At least 35 distinct originating numbers across 72 hours. All 903. That is the design, not an accident.

FACT. The AI answered at least 17 of them with the full greeting:

"This is Sona, Ryan's assistant, and this call is recorded. Ryan just missed you, but I can answer your questions and get your info straight to him."

FACT. One of the campaign recordings, transcribed off a five second call on 2026-08-26 at 2:57 PM Central:

"Customers cannot find your business. Please press 1 to"

The call ended before the sentence did. That is what a machine talking to a machine sounds like.

---

The timeline

FACT. 2026-08-24. The calls start.

FACT. 2026-08-26, 8:55 AM, 9:23 AM, 11:47 AM Central. Three AI answered calls in one morning.

FACT. 2026-08-26, 12:07 PM Central. I email my provider and ask them to shut every AI call feature off.

FACT. 2026-08-26, 12:23 PM Central. Support answers in sixteen minutes. Good response time. But the answer is that it is not something support flips for you. It is a change you make yourself in the call flow builder.

FACT. 2026-08-26, 1:11 PM Central. The AI answers another call anyway.

FACT. 2026-08-26, 1:47 PM Central. The AI answers again. Full greeting. On tape.

FACT. 2026-08-26, 2:57 PM Central. A campaign call comes in and there is no AI greeting on the transcript at all. Just the robocall talking into the air for five seconds.

FACT. No further calls of any kind through 2026-08-27, 7:30 AM Central.

---

What the record shows

An email to support does not change your phone.

That is the whole lesson and it cost me two more AI answered calls to learn it.

The provider's own written guidance, quoted from their reply:

"To stop Sona from answering calls... edit the call flow on web or desktop: Settings, Phone numbers, select your number, Edit call flow, then remove the Sona step and republish."

Republish is the word that matters. Nothing you change in a call flow builder is live until you publish it. I have watched people make the right change and skip that button and then swear the product is broken.

---

The five minute fix. Copy it.

This works on most modern business phone platforms. The menu names change. The idea does not.

1. Pull the AI step out of your call flow, then republish.

If you did not ask for an AI receptionist and one is answering, it came switched on. Take it out. Then publish. Nothing saves until you publish.

2. Add a phone menu. This is the one that actually ends the campaign.

One step. "Press 1 to reach us."

A robocall cannot press a key. It hangs up on its own before anything answers and before anything gets billed.

This is why blocklisting fails here. The campaign rotates its numbers on purpose. You block 35 and it dials from the 36th tomorrow. The menu kills all of them at once, including the numbers that have not been used yet.

3. Then blocklist the numbers you already have, as cleanup.

Not as the fix. As housekeeping.

4. Report it.

reportfraud.ftc.gov takes the complaint. donotcall.gov takes the number. Neither one takes five minutes.

Do not call the opt out number the recording gives you. Calling an opt out line on an illegal campaign proves your number is live and answered by a human being. That is worth money to them. That is the whole point of offering it.

---

What I am not going to do

One of the recordings gives a company name and an opt out number.

I am not printing either one.

NEEDS AUTHENTICATION. A name spoken on a robocall greeting proves nothing about who is actually behind the campaign. Anybody can say anything into a recording. I have the audio and I will keep it, and if the name ever gets tied to the campaign by something better than the campaign's own script, that is a different article.

I am also not printing the 35 originating numbers.

PRIVATE / NOT PUBLIC. Campaigns like this spoof real local numbers. Half those digits probably belong to somebody in East Texas who has no idea their number is being used and is getting angry callbacks about it. Publishing that list would hurt the wrong people.

The list is preserved. It is just not published.

---

What this does not prove

DOCUMENTED INFERENCE. I believe no real customer was lost in that window. Every call in the set matches the campaign pattern.

But I cannot prove it, and I am not going to pretend I can.

A real caller who hears a robot say "Ryan just missed you" and hangs up leaves no voicemail, no transcript, and no trace. There is no log entry for a customer who decided you were not worth a second try.

That is the honest version. I would rather give you that than a clean number I made up.

---

What it does prove

Three things, and every one of them is on tape.

An AI feature you did not ask for can be answering your phone right now.

An email to support does not turn it off. You do.

And a one step phone menu beats a blocklist of any length, because you cannot block a number that has not been dialed yet.

---

The bottom line

I got hit with this and I published it the same week instead of quietly fixing it and pretending it never happened.

That is the difference I am selling.

Most people who build websites and phone systems will show you the polished version. I will show you the log.

If your phone is doing something you did not ask it to do, if you are missing calls, or if you have no idea what happens to a customer who calls you at 6:40 on a Tuesday evening, that is a fixable problem and it is the exact thing I build.

See what I build and what it costs.

Or call me. A human answers now. (903) 500-8898.

---

Do not threaten anyone. Do not harass anyone. Do not contact anyone in my name.

Read it. Share it. If this campaign is hitting your business line too, send me the numbers and the dates. I am keeping the file.

The record does not lie.