# booth73 FAQ booth73 is a payphone for AI. Tell us who to call and what to say — we dial, an AI handles the conversation, and you get a recording, a transcript, and a summary when it's done. ## What is booth73? A simple way to delegate a phone call to an AI. You provide a phone number, your name, and what the AI should do on the call. booth73 makes the call, the AI talks to whoever answers, and the whole conversation is captured for you to review. Think of it as a payphone — pay-as-you-go, no account, no subscription. ## Who is it for? Anyone who'd rather not make a phone call themselves. Common uses: - Booking a restaurant or hotel reservation - Calling a business that's only open during your work hours - Following up on an appointment, refund, or order status - Reaching a place that doesn't speak your language - Leaving a voicemail without having to call ## How does pricing work? Prepaid cards in $5, $10, or $25 amounts. Each card buys minutes at a fixed per-minute rate. Cards never expire. There are no subscriptions and no monthly fees — you only pay for what you use. ## What's auto-refill? Optional. Save a payment method on file and we'll top up your card automatically when the balance drops below a threshold you choose (say, refill $10 whenever you're below $1). You can turn it off at any time. Your card details are stored securely by Stripe — booth73 never sees them. ## How do I get a card? Visit booth73.com and pick a card amount. Pay with any credit or debit card. Your card code appears immediately and we email it to the address you used at checkout, with a link that pre-loads it on the site so you're ready to make a call. ## How do I make a call? Three things to fill in, then click Call: 1. **Your name.** The AI introduces itself as calling on your behalf. 2. **The phone number** you want to call, with country code (e.g. `+13055551234`). 3. **Instructions** — what you want the AI to do on the call. For example, "book a table for two at 7pm" or "ask if they're open Sunday". The destination phone rings, the AI handles the conversation, and the live transcript appears on your screen as it goes. (You'll need a card code in place first — paste one in or buy one in seconds via inline checkout.) ## What languages does booth73 speak? Nine: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese. The language is picked automatically from the destination country, or you can choose it yourself. ## Where can I call? booth73 currently supports outbound calls to 12 countries: - **Americas:** United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil - **Europe:** United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain - **Asia:** Japan We're a research preview and we add destinations as demand surfaces. If you need a country that's not on the list, file a request at `booth73.com/support` — most additions take a few days once a real use case is on the other end. ## Can I listen to call recordings? Yes. Every call is recorded for you. You can listen to any past call from the lookup page (`booth73.com/lookup?code=YOUR_CARD`) or directly from the email we send after the call ends. Recordings are private to the cardholder and never shared with anyone else. ## Will I get a transcript and summary? Yes. After every call you'll see the full transcript on screen. If your card has an email on file, you'll also receive an email with the transcript, a short summary, the call's duration and cost, plus a link to the recording. ## Will the person I'm calling know it's an AI? Yes. The first thing booth73 says on every call is that this is an AI-handled call placed on your behalf. We do this because it's the honest thing to do, and because some places legally require AI disclosure. It's not optional. ## What stops people from misusing booth73? Several layers, applied in this order. None of these are perfect, but together they make booth73 a poor tool for the misuse cases that matter most. **Before a call is placed:** 1. **TCPA attestation.** Every call requires the caller to affirm they have prior consent from the recipient, a prior business relationship, or that this is a personal call to someone who would expect to hear from them. The attestation, your IP, timestamp, and user agent are stored as a paper trail. AI agents that try to set the attestation without asking the human user get a tool description that explicitly forbids that. 2. **Instruction screening.** Before we burn vendor minutes, every script passes through two filters: a fast keyword pattern match for known abuse shapes (impersonation, scam patterns, threats, info solicitation, gift-card payment demands, cold sales pitches, warranty/insurance/mortgage offers, "you've been selected" cold openers, political fundraising), and a Claude Haiku second pass for subtler patterns the regex misses. 3. **Time-of-day enforcement.** Calls outside 8am-9pm in the recipient's local timezone are refused. The timezone is resolved from the destination number. 4. **Emergency / shortcode block.** 911, 988, N11 services, premium- rate numbers (1-900, 1-976, +979), and satellite networks are refused. 5. **Anti-harassment rate limits.** One in-flight call per card. No more than 2 calls from the same source IP to the same destination in any 24-hour window. No more than 5 calls from any source to the same destination in any 24-hour window. These catch the "mint multiple cards, hammer one target" attack pattern. 6. **Hard duration cap.** Calls on standard cards are capped at exactly the funded balance. Calls on auto-refill cards are capped at 30 minutes. **During the call (baked into the AI's system prompt):** 1. **AI disclosure** in the first sentence — always, never optional. 2. **Recording disclosure** in the first sentence — required for two-party-consent states (CA, FL, PA, IL, MD, MA, MT, NH, WA). 3. **No commitments.** The AI is hardcoded to never agree to charges, sign up for services, accept Terms of Service, or commit you to any contract or payment beyond what's in your script. 4. **No sensitive info disclosure.** Even if it appears in your context, the AI will never read out your SSN, credit card, bank account, password, or full home address. 5. **Emergency handoff.** If the recipient mentions an emergency or asks the AI to dial 911 for them, the AI tells them to hang up and call emergency services directly, then ends the call. 6. **Minor handling.** If the recipient indicates they're a minor — they state their age, mention being in school, ask for a parent, or otherwise reveal they're under 18 — the AI apologizes, asks if there's an adult available, and ends politely if not. 7. **Hostile-callee exit.** If the recipient becomes hostile, threatening, or sexually inappropriate, the AI ends within one polite sentence and hangs up. 8. **Calm-tone enforcement.** The AI is told to match the recipient's energy and never to be more enthusiastic than they are — no "Great!", "Awesome!", "Wonderful!". This makes the call feel professional rather than sales-y. **After the call:** 1. **Long-call alert.** If a call has been going for 10 minutes, we email the cardholder a notification with a one-click "end call now" link, in case the AI is stuck in a loop or the recipient has the AI tied up. 2. **Opt-out auto-detection.** A post-call classifier scans every transcript for "stop calling", "remove me from your list", "don't call again", and similar phrases from the recipient. On hit, the recipient's number is added to booth73's Do-Not-Call list — no card can call them again until an operator removes them from the list. 3. **Operator-managed Do-Not-Call list.** Anyone can also request a durable block by filing a report at `/support`. Operator-added numbers are blocked immediately at the API level (calls to them are refused with HTTP 403 before any vendor minutes are spent). 4. **Audience flag.** A Claude Haiku post-call classifier reviews every transcript and flags calls where the recipient indicated they were a minor — surfaced in the admin dashboard for review and proactive refund. 5. **Telemarketing classifier.** Same post-call pass tags calls that look like sales outreach so we can review patterns. **At the account level:** 1. **No anonymous tier.** Every call requires a paid card (or a free $5 card claimed at `/promo`, one per email, rate-limited per IP). 2. **Disposable email domains rejected** on `/promo` signup. We don't claim this is impenetrable — no system is. But booth73 is deliberately a worse tool for harassment, scams, and cold sales than its competitors, and most attempts hit at least one filter before any vendor minutes are spent. If you find a hole, please tell us at `booth73.com/support`. ## What if I received a call from booth73 and I want it to stop? Two paths. Both work. **During the call**, say something like "stop calling", "don't call me again", or "remove me from your list". The AI is instructed to end the call immediately. A post-call classifier scans the transcript for these phrases and automatically adds your number to booth73's Do-Not-Call list, so no card — yours, anyone else's, any future visitor's — can call you from booth73 again. **After the call** (or if you'd rather not engage on the line), file a report at `booth73.com/support` with your number and we'll add it to the same Do-Not-Call list manually. Operator-added blocks take effect immediately, usually within a business day of the report. If you'd like to report misuse — a call that felt like a scam, an AI that didn't disclose itself, or anything else that seemed off — please report it at `booth73.com/support`. We read every report, refund any improperly-placed call, and revoke the card used to place it if abuse is confirmed. ## Can booth73 call 911 or other emergency numbers? No. Emergency and short-code numbers (911, 988, 999, 112, etc.) are blocked. If you have an emergency, please call from your own phone — an AI should never be the one dialing emergency services on your behalf. ## How do I look up a card I bought? Visit `booth73.com/lookup?code=YOUR_CARD`. You'll see your balance, recent calls, recordings, and auto-refill settings. Anyone with the code can read this, so treat your card code like cash. ## Can I get a refund? Yes. Reach us through the support form at `booth73.com/support` from the address on file with your card code, and we'll refund any unused balance. Minutes already used aren't refundable. ## How do I get help? Use the support form at `booth73.com/support`. Include your card code and a sentence about what went wrong. We read every message and reply from a real human, usually within one business day. ## I'm building an AI agent — can it use booth73? Yes. booth73 exposes a REST API, an MCP server, and machine-readable discovery files for AI agents. See `booth73.com/llms.txt` for the agent quickstart. For longer-form context, the booth73 blog has two starter articles written for both humans and AI agents: - [How to give Claude a phone number](/blog/give-claude-a-phone-number) — step-by-step MCP install, the tool catalog, and a complete example. - [AI voice calling APIs in 2026](/blog/ai-voice-calling-apis-2026) — honest comparison of booth73 vs Vapi vs Bland vs Retell vs Air. Each article is also available as raw markdown (`/blog/.md`) — Claude and other agents prefer to ingest that.