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This week we rolled out support for PayPal payments on TrapCall’s Sign Up page. It may seem like a small addition, but it was long overdue and we’re really excited to be able to offer an alternative payment method now. If you’re an existing TrapCall user, we’ve also updated the Plans & Billing page within your dashboard so you can switch your account from credit card billing to PayPal billing, if you prefer PayPal.

Stay tuned to this blog, our Facebook Page or our Twitter account as we roll out more improvements to TrapCall this summer. Full steam ahead!

TrapCall’s official affiliate program has just launched! This is your opportunity to earn money promoting TrapCall’s one-of-a-kind service. You earn between $4.95 and $24.95 every time you refer a new customer to sign up for TrapCall! (the payout depends on the package the customer signs up for)

There’s no limit to how much you can make with TrapCall’s affiliate program. We expect some motivated affiliates will make nice livings off simply referring customers to TrapCall.

Signing up for TrapCall’s affiliate program is free and takes just a few seconds. Just visit http://www.trapcall.com/affiliate to get started earning today.

TrapCall gets a lot of “thank you” emails, Facebook messages, and tweets but sometimes there are ones that really stick out to us. Recently, one of our customers emailed us to tell us how happy they were to have found TrapCall, after having used a somewhat similar service targeted specifically to putting an end to harassing calls.

The site is HarassingCalls.com and for $39/day ($249.00/month) they offer a call forwarding service with the call logs of all the calls you received from that day. $39 a day to forward your calls to an 800 number and give you the call logs? Not to mention that two phones are required and no additional perks of the service could be found anywhere. Are people really paying for HarassingCalls service when TrapCall offers the same service (unblocking blocked calls, with lots of extra features, even on our most basic package) for just $4.95 a month? Why pay MORE for a service with LESS features?

We wanted to put TrapCall.com and HarassingCalls.com head-to-head for our blog readers to see the difference. Below is a feature comparison chart of TrapCall.com versus HarassingCalls.com.

Features	HarassingCalls	TrapCall
Calls Go Back To Your Phone
Requires One Phone
Instant Activation
Online Control Panel
Realtime Call Logs
Caller ID Name & Address Information
Voicemail Transcriptions
Missed Call Alerts
Blacklist Numbers
Incoming Call Recording
Cost	$39/day	$4.95-$24.95/month

We’re proud to announce that TrapCall is now available for Sprint customers!

Sprint users can now unmask blocked calls and put an end to those unwanted harassing calls! Of course, our other great features like incoming call recording, voicemail transcriptions and Caller ID name with address are all available on Sprint as well.

Head on over to our Sign Up page and get your free trial of TrapCall. Now for Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon!

This week we rolled out our new and improved online dashboard for TrapCall users. The new dashboard is easier to use than ever, with better organization and easier access to your TrapCall records and settings. Once logged in, you’ll also notice we’ve put together a simplified main page with easier access to your most recent call logs, voicemails and recordings, plus a quick blacklist feature making it quicker than ever to blacklist a number!

Over the past 9 months, TrapCall has received thousands of emails, tweets, Facebook posts, blog comments and phone calls requesting that TrapCall add support for Sprint. It was kind of a sore subject for us. But, truth be told, we love Sprint. Their wireless data network is great. However, one policy at Sprint had caused major roadblocks for TrapCall and the likelihood of TrapCall coming to Sprint….until Sprint dropped some great news on us this week!

Sprint currently charges 20 cents per minute, on top of airtime charges, for conditional call forwarding, which is the backbone of TrapCall’s service. This means that every unanswered, busy or rejected call sent to TrapCall and then sent back to your phone or your phone’s voicemail, costs 20 cents per minute. We felt it was in our best interest not to subject Sprint users to these charges, especially when most Sprint customers are unaware of these charges! You would be surprised at how many minutes per month a typical user ends up conditionally call forwarding once the service is activated. The charges can add up fast.

The worst part of all was that Sprint was the only large carrier with this policy. Most mobile carriers like conditional call forwarding. Why? Because it essentially creates two phone calls, allowing the carrier to charge double airtime minutes for these calls.

But things are changing fast at Sprint. Today, Sprint announced its “Open” approach to encourage mobile applications developers to take advantage of Sprints voice, data and messaging capabilities. After months and months, Sprint has finally listened to TrapCall and announced that they will be lifting the per-minute fees for conditional call forwarding beginning mid-November. A major win for TrapCall users!

Sprint issued a press release this afternoon stating, “Application developers have created a number of voicemail and messaging services that take advantage of call forwarding capabilities. Sprint announced today that it will not charge customers for certain types of call forwarding. Conditional call forwarding for busy calls or calls not answered using the customer’s wireless phone will be free, beginning mid-November.” No longer will users have to migrate away from Sprint to take advantage of TrapCall’s Caller ID unmasking, which we have seen in large numbers since launching TrapCall earlier this year.

Kudos, Sprint!

Starting in mid-November when Sprint’s new policies go into effect, TrapCall will begin testing Sprint’s network and its voice messaging compatibility with TrapCall. We’ll also be working to roll out support for Google Voice, so users can enjoy the benefits of both services at once, something we’re really excited about! (Google also recently announced they would begin supporting conditional call forwarding!)

So for all you Sprint users out there who are anxious to sign up for TrapCall, keep your fingers crossed that Sprint makes good on their promises to developers. Keep checking TrapCall’s blog, Facebook or Twitter for the latest updates. We promise you’ll be the first to know when TrapCall and Sprint play nice together, finally. We can’t wait to have you Sprint users onboard!

If your one of the many people who upgraded to a new iPhone 3G S yesterday don’t forget to reprogram TrapCall once you’ve successfully switched phones! To continue to take advantage of all of TrapCall’s features, be sure to log in to your TrapCall account and visit the Program My Phone link under the My Phone tab for our programming codes. Once you’ve punched in the programming codes, you’ll once again be unmasking blocked calls, receiving voicemail transcriptions, missed call alerts and taking advantage of all the other features TrapCall has to offer!

Many of you were saddened by our recent changes to the way TrapCall handles your voicemail as we cut back our free Fly Trap features. We never take for granted the commitment we’ve made with TrapCall, to every one of our users, but we were a little amazed at the overwhelming response, generating hundreds of thousands of signups in such a short amount of time. As we note in the signup process, the free Fly Trap account does have certain limitations, carrier voicemail being one of them. We’ve now realized that this fact was not clearly indicated on our site. For those of you who would still like carrier voicemail or visual voicemail support, we’ve tried to make the costs as absolutely minimal as possible, by pricing this feature at under 10 cents a day.

Please understand that we did not mean to pull the rug out from underneath you by making these changes to your voicemail so quickly. We failed to properly communicate that the changes would only effect a small portion of our users immediately. We’ve now realized we need to allow more time communicating changes to our users, and do it more transparently, which is why we now have a policy of emailing users at least 5 business days in advance of any important changes to your TrapCall plan, to avoid the “zero notice” feedback we received.

We also experienced some unexpected downtime on our toll-free number and our new voicemail access number shortly after these changes. Additionally, these issues occurred while some of our staff was on Passover holiday. We just couldn’t catch a break.

It’s very clear we have a lot of work to do to keep everything running smoothly and everybody happy. We’re focusing now on making our TrapCall beta more reliable for all of you, as we value you so much, and we’ll keep everyone updated as we make progress. Thank you so much for your continued support of TrapCall while we’re still in our beta stage!

Update: For more information on conditional call-forwarding and how TrapCall handles your voicemail, you can head over to the section on our FAQs page for more details.

You asked for it, you got it.

TrapCall now supports Verizon Wireless!

We worked hard, and as fast as possible, to learn all the ins and outs of Verizon Wireless so you can take advantage of everything TrapCall has to offer and never get a blocked or restricted call again.

So, Verizon Wireless users…enjoy!

Welcome to TrapCall. We’ve finally launched!!

And we have to say, in our opinion, its been worth the wait, we love what the team has built and we hope you do too!

We want to send out a special thanks to the talented TrapCall team, Matthew, Bryan and Mike, that worked day and night to make this site live.

Once again, thank you to everyone who has visited the site and supported us so far.

Get ready for the site to go ballistic!