“My phone has been silent since I’ve been with you.”
Gerald Lorenzo Pettus spent years being called by people he did not know, and money on apps that promised to stop it. He has been using Gini since June. These are his words and his numbers.
Gerald Lorenzo Pettus · North Carolina · Gini Help customer since June 2026
By the numbers
- 1,719 — Calls answered and screened for him
- 1,240 — Callers who hung up rather than say who they were
- 313 — People he knows, rung straight through
Measured from Gerald’s own account between 9 June and 16 September 2026. “Hung up” means the caller abandoned the call when Gini asked who was calling — it is not a count of confirmed scams.
What it was like before
Asked how many unwanted calls he was getting, Gerald did not hesitate. “I was getting maybe 80, maybe 90 calls a day. Same old BS. Either calling about insurance, I want some money, whatever.”
Our own records show fewer than that — closer to seventeen a day at the busiest point. The gap is worth sitting with. When a phone never stops, nobody is counting; they are just bracing.
What wore on him was not knowing which was which.
“If they weren’t in my contact, it might be something important. I don’t know. But if they were either bill collectors, spam callers, or somebody trying to tell me I got free health care — which I already got.”
Six apps before this one
Gerald had been shopping for a fix for a long time. Over the call he listed them from memory: RoboKiller, TrueCaller, Hiya, Scam Shield, Call Blocker, Call Protect. Some cost him $65 or $75 a year. He kept one for nearly two years while believing it did nothing at all.
“Out of all the apps that I have tried, they were no good,” he said. “They just fake. I didn’t want to just give them money and they wouldn’t do any job.”
So he was skeptical of us, too. Asked what almost stopped him from signing up, his answer was about everyone who had come before: “If it was going to work. A lot of them say they’re going to do something, and then they wind up not doing it — and that’s a waste of money.”
What changed
The first thing he noticed was the quiet, and the second was that he could finally see what he had been missing.
“A lot of them calls was getting blocked. I can actually look on the app and see who’s calling. If somebody’s got a message, they’ll leave one. If they don’t, I’m blocking it. Period.”
That has become a nightly habit: he checks the app at the end of the day to see who rang. Since June, Gini has answered 1,719 calls on his behalf. 1,240 of those callers hung up rather than say who they were. 313 people he actually knows were put straight through, 72 numbers were blocked outright, and 94 calls were sent to voicemail for him to read on his own time.
One number in the data stands out: 1,367 different numbers have called him in three months, and only 163 of them ever called twice. That is the fingerprint of numbers that rotate faster than any blocklist can keep up with — which is why the six apps before us struggled.
“If you ain’t in my contact, you won’t get to me.”
The number that called 105 times
One number called Gerald 105 times. Two more, from his own area code, called 37 and 29 times.
It turned out not to be a scammer at all. It was a company he does business with, one he had already asked repeatedly to stop. “Every time you call — I already told them, when I get the win, I get the money, I give you the money,” he said. “So don’t call me every day.”
Screening does not need to know whether a caller is a criminal or merely relentless. It only has to stop the phone from ringing until Gerald decides otherwise.
What still gets through
Not everything is caught, and Gerald raised it before we could ask.
“A couple have, I’m not going to lie, a couple have. And that’s very rare. In the beginning, maybe two or three calls that got through that shouldn’t. But I was like, okay, they’re probably still working out the system.”
That is an honest account of how screening works. Some callers answer the question convincingly enough to be put through, and a few of those turn out to be nuisances.
What he tells people
Asked how he would describe it to a friend who complained about spam calls, Gerald did not reach for our language. He used his own.
And on the callers who insist they will get through regardless, he was unbothered.
“If you want your phone silent, you need to go with Gini. Your phone will go silent. You’ll be like — oh, is anybody calling me?”
Frequently Asked Questions
Do the people Gerald knows still get through?
Yes. Contacts saved in his phone ring straight through without being screened — 313 calls from people he knows were connected during the period we measured. Screening applies to numbers he does not have saved.
Does it block every unwanted call?
No, and Gerald says so himself in the interview. A small number got through, mostly in his first weeks. What changed for him is the volume: 1,240 callers ended the call rather than say who they were.
What does “hung up rather than say who they were” actually mean?
When an unknown number calls, Gini answers first and asks who is calling and why. 1,240 callers abandoned the call at that point. That is a measure of callers who would not identify themselves — it is not a count of confirmed scams, and we do not report it as one.
How is this different from the call blockers he tried before?
Blockers work from lists of known-bad numbers. In Gerald’s three months, 1,367 different numbers called him and only 163 called more than once, so a list is nearly always one step behind. Gini answers the call and asks, which does not depend on having seen the number before.
See what your own phone looks like
Gini answers calls from numbers you do not know, asks who is calling and why, and rings you through when the call is real. There is a 7-day free trial, and setup uses standard call forwarding — no new number, no switching carriers.
How we know this: Recorded interview, 16 September 2026. Gerald chose to be identified by his full name and reviewed this page before publication. Taken from Gerald’s own account records, not estimated or modelled. Figures accurate as of 16 September 2026.