This really seems like a common sense feature and I’m not sure why it doesn’t exist.
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Various people have been asking for this for several years. It’s something that should be a basic feature.
I’ve always gotten the impression that there’s really no benefit for them to block individual SMS messages. With voice calls, if something is blocked, nobody gets charged — not you and not the carrier. But SMS works differently. From what a Verizon tech explained to me years ago, once an SMS hits their gateway, they get charged for it. If they were to block it at that point, they can’t bill you, but they still have to pay on their end. That was Verizon’s logic, and if that’s how it works for a huge carrier, it probably applies even more to a smaller provider like voip.ms.
The only time carriers do block is when a number is spamming multiple customers. In those cases, they can block it further upstream before it ever reaches them, so they’re not charged — and then everyone on their network is protected from that sender. But for individual user‑level blocking, there’s just no financial incentive for them to implement it.
My Verizon text messaging allows me to block numbers as spam.
Unless you’re referring to blocking at the network level, my Verizon service also allows me to block numbers as spam. However, if I search for those messages, I can still find them stored in a blocked folder.
I’m really disappointed that VOIP.MS does not have the ability to allow us to block SMS messages from specific numbers… VOIPO had this and it worked very well. Since VOIPO went under and I was basically forced to move and give up a year or two of prepaid service to them, I’m really disappointed that VOIP.MS does not have this feature at all.