Tel-Lynx Guardian Personal Telephone Assistant

This call blocker is very sophisticated. If you are technically inclined its probably great. I am not. My son helped me to set it up. When the unit started flashing all lights and stopped working I contacted the company. Communication is email only. The person said to disconnect the unit and connect it to my desk-top PC. Then download their program and using it copy the memory of the unit to my hard drive. After that he would give me further instructions of what to do next. I do not have the time to spend on effectively tracking down a machine error. It has been over a year since I bought it, so past warranty. I am planning to throw it in the trash.

The only reason I don't give this 5 stars is that I think the software needs a bit of refining, seasoning, or whatever you want to call it. But I can say this, it has blocked 100% of my robo calls since I installed 4 days ago. I was getting at least 2-3 everyday and some days more. I frequently got this same call just as I was going to bed every night. I have not received a single call. The house is so quiet, I love it. Now when they get their Windows software ready so you can play with all the settings without having to go thru the telephone menus, they will really have something. But out of the box, it just plain works. It is $140 well spent in my opinion. If my Mom or Dad was still living, I'd buy one for them!Updated 11/19/2015Well, I have had my Guardian installed for 10 days now, so decided to update my review. The longer I have had it, the more I appreciate it. The silence is wonderful. So far, I have not had even 1 robo call come through. And the really good news is I didn't have to setup a bunch of stuff to get it to work. Yes, the "advanced" features require some work to get right, but I imagine most people really won't need them. This is really a pretty sophisticated device. I am sure when the Windows software is available it will be better, but this thing does what it says it is going to do and as such I have to change my rating to a full 5 stars. The only thing us consumers can do is compare the devices that are available. While this device isn't perfect in every way (phone keypad interface for setting advanced features), it is still the "Cadillac" of the bunch. So deserves that type of rating. Well, maybe I should say it is the Lexus of the bunch. Ha! Ha!I'd say there are 2 things which really differentiate this product from the others:1. You don't need to create a "black list". That also means you don't have to press a button to block a call (like all the other products). It works out of the box for the "basic" mode. It works by intercepting the phone call and asking the caller (robot) to press a number. Of course the robot doesn't understand the question, much less press the right number, so the call is dropped. While a human can press the right key to move on, they also must identify themselves. Telemarketers probably don't like to do that because they know you will hang up. So if the call makes it that far, when your phone actually rings, you know who is on there. If it isn't someone you want to talk to, you send it to never never land. If this was someone you want to talk to, they don't have to go through the process again. Their name and info is added to the phone book.2. I am very sure this is the only call blocking product, among the ones I have researched on Amazon, that never rings the phone even once when blocking a call. All the others have to ring the phone at least once (as does my Panasonic home phone that blocks calls) in order to get the caller id info and use that to block the call. My house has been very quite since I got my Guardian installed. I love the quite.The last thing I want to comment on is the support. On my initial install I had a problem. I go to the website and send an email about it. To my amazement, I got a response in about 15 minutes which then led to a phone call and my problem was resolved over the phone. I haven't really had any other real problems, but did have trouble getting some “advanced” features setup right. Those were all handled via email and each time I got a response in just a few minutes, not a few hours or days. Chris (the CEO and chief support guy) clearly cares about customer support and it shows. I could not be happier with the product or the support.Among all the other good things, this product was developed and assembled in the good old USA, North Carolina I think.updated 1/22/2016Been interesting viewing some of the comments, to the degree I feel I need to give a further update. I really want to say 2 things. 1. I have no affiliation with the company that makes this product. I am not a relative, an employee, or a relative of an employee. I am a retired IT executive from a very large company who just happens to be a "Techo Geek". I am more technically savvy then the average guy, so maybe that is why I had no significant issues. I also am a verified purchaser who purchased from Amazon.com. When I am researching products for potential purchase, I only consider reviews from people who are verified purchasers. I'd recommend that practice for anyone considering a product. Clearly I have seen "glory" reviews of products from "questionable sources" and also "Hateful" reviews that were probably done by competing products. But, in my opinion, if the person actually purchased the product, they have the right to say what they think.The 2nd thing I want to say is this. I have not received a single robo call (I should say, no robo calls have actually gotten through) since I got this product installed. It is the most expensive product "of it's kind", but it does work. When I was telling my neighbor about it, he says to me, "Well, I have $140 so why not try it." He decided to buy from the company's website in order to get it even cheaper. As he told me, "The worst thing that could happen is I return it under the 30 return policy". That is a good way to look at it.The last thing I want to say and I will not comment further or update further is "It still just works!"

I was looking for a product that would do one thing and that is block calls. I purchased Tel-Lynx Guardian Personal Telephone Assistant  without Blue Tooth. After getting off to a bad start I think that I now have it set up so that does exactly what I want it to do with the minimum amount of confusion for me, other family members and legitimate callers. The Guardian will do much more than what I am using it for but as you add features you are going to add complexity. My goal is to keep it simple and most of if not all the other features the Guardian has are duplicates of what my phone system was already doing.This is a good product and Amazon considers a four star rating to be a good rating. Overall, I recommend it for the purpose that I am using it for. I do not consider it a five star product for reasons I have stated below. Also, When I first looked at this product and saw all the five star ratings it made me very skeptical. I am rating it specifically for the features that I am using. I have not tested it ofr anything else.Technical Support ***** (5)I have gotten the best technical support for this product than for any device I have owned.Hardware ***** (3)The hardware is solid. Unlike some other call blockers it has its own power and does not need batteries. In fact if I am not mistaken it is now powering all my phones. I would have preferred that it have an LED display but I can live without it. The whole design is very innovativeEase of Use ***The way it works is really clever. It uses a verbal menu structure and can be controlled from any phone in you house. It is workable but because of all the features and options I personally feel it is too complex. Also in order to give the system all those options the way you access some of them seems a bit unusual. I originally thought I was buying something with a Graphical User Interface that would allow me to do many of the functions done with phone keypad with a computer. It turns out I found a web page that was never meant to be public that describes a future version of this product.Documentation***Personally, I find the documentation difficult to use overall. When I brought this up with technical support I was told that some people love it and other people hate it. I can understand that. Much of the documentation is very good, especially when you want to perform a specific menu task. Each menu item is laid out very clearly. The quick reference is very good if you understand what you are doing. The installation instructions are clear except if you didn't purchase the Bluetooth option you are instructed to jump over about a third of them. The user guide is found online.It is 92 pages long, is not searchable, has no index and no visible table of contents. It does have bookmarks but probably not nearly enough. Much of the first part of the user guide should be moved to glossaries and appendixes at the end. It should also include everything that is included in the startup guide and quick reference.It is a shame that something that could be fixed so easily is considered good enough.One other thing I will mention is a product called "NoMoRobo". If it will work work with your phone service I highly recommend it as your first choice in blocking robocalls. It has virtually eliminated all the robocalls to my phone. It is a free service and is very easy to set up and requires no additional hardware. You may want to try it before you purchase anything.9/18/2016 Update: A few weeks ago I disconnected the Tel-Lynx because: 1) Callers were having difficulty using it., 2) I was having difficulty remembering how to set it up. 3) I found the instructions difficult to use. Originally I thought I might hook it back up but now I doubt I ever unless it the developer adds a graphical PC interface. I still think it could have value but I am finding very few calls make it past NoMoRobo and I also learned that Comcast has added PC based call blocking to their phone service. In spite of all of this I will stand by my statement that is the best white list call blocker.