If the phone company is going to charge the originator, they'd have to verify that the call you reported was actually an illegal RoboCall. Some dishonest people might report people whom they know but don't want to hear from as RoboCalls. Others might erroneously report organizations that are legally allowed to call them, like companies with which they had a business relationship or political candidates. Verifying that each claim was valid would probably cost the phone company much more than 50 cents.
> If the phone company is going to charge the originator, they'd have to verify that the call you reported was actually an illegal RoboCall
If I'm getting unwanted calls, I don't really care whether the government thinks they are legal, I just want them stopped.
How about this solution: if the caller ID is on a whitelist, it goes straight through. If not, the caller gest asked a question (which should filter out robots). If there are determined human unwanted callers, a second line of defence would be to ask them to key in a 4 digit code (and I'd only give the solution to people who wanted to call me).
Google voice lets you do something along those lines. I personally found it incredibly tedious and quickly turned it off.
I think the grandparents idea of *RC is spot on. Verification can be done through volume; i.e. a one-off may do nothing but repeated reports indicate something is up. Just like reporting spam in email.
Along those lines, some sort of charge-to-call system may work. Like calling collect in reverse, but the receiving party can decide to not charge the fee if its someone they know (or flip it, hitting # within 30 seconds of an inbound call will capture the fee and disconnect)
