How to know if there is voicemail.

[micky]

I have a home phone, wired, but supplied by Verizon Fios.

How can I know if I have voicemail waiting without picking up the phone?

Like a light or a beeper.

I'm willing to buy something.

When I google, everything is about cell phones.

I have a phone machine, and when a message is left there a light flashes on every phone in the house, plus the base phone beeps once in a while. That's just fine.

But sometimes for reasons I don't understand**, the voicemail answers the phone before the machine does. Today there were 5 such messages including my brother who called Sunday, but it was too late on Monday to call him back, so it will take me two days. I don't want a repeat of that. (The other 4 were silence.)

**I've set the ring count before anssering on the voice mail to 6, the maximum, and on the phone machine to 4, so the machine should always answer first. Unless the storage is full but it never is, and I wouldn't be complaining if it were. Actually it's nice that voicemail backs up the machine -- at least I think it would, maybe, I think -- after it takes about 30 messages. At the least it's nice that voicemail will take messages when I'm on the phone and I don't respond to call-waiting, which of course is usually spammers, so I don't even look.

I talked to Verizon and there is no way I myself can turn off my voice mail. They will do it but then I have to call again, to turn it back on when I go out of town. Before the virus I planned to go out of town last March,

(I also made another mistake. Even though I had long deprecated voice mail for having to pick up the handset to know about it, I recorded a messaage, "I'm busy. Please leave a message or call back later." Nowhere near strong enough wrt calling back later. I'll fix that tonight.)

BTW, voicemail gives two messages, the one I recorded which plays if the phone is off the hook and probably if I'm on the phone. AND the one which plays if no one answes. That just slowly recites my phone number in a computer voice, then after a while asks if the caller wants to save it, redo it, erase it. Maybe there was a way to record a real message but I didn't see it.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I'm confused. You have both a machine and Verizon voice mail? Sounds like they are possibly working against each other. I'd try to live with just one. I use the machine and if I'm out of town, tough, you wait until I get back.

[micky]

Yes, I have both, but they're not working against each other. Normally the phone machine answers. Sometimes the voicemail does a) when the phone is accidentally off the hook, which has happened, b) when I'm on the phone, which has happened a lot, and c) sometimes when I can't account for it, but eventually I'll figure that out.

Let's assume I chose voicemail. How can I know if I have a voicemail message waiting without picking up the phone? Is there a gizmo I can buy, or some other way?

The problem is when I *am* home and I get a voicemail but don't know I"ve gotten it, because I haven't used the home phone to make a call.

[Anonymous]

Yes there are devices to do what you want. One thing first, you need to know if the signal you get from your telco is Stutter Dial Tone, or "FSK"

You can read the gory details here, and see which product works for you

[trader_4]

The machine I had at home you could easily retrieve the messages while away. You set a three digit code and when away you called home, when the machine answered you entered the code and it played your messages. You can't put a light on because that would require the phone companies to have some standardized method by which to communicate to the device in your home that a message is there. I've never heard of such a thing. If anything, now that phones are going VOIP, I would think some phone companies could have a feature where they would text or email you if you have phone messages on their systems or have apps for smart phones so you could do visual VM. But then more and more people are just using smart phones these days, the whole home phone thing must be dying, so I would not expect much in the way of innovation these days. I would bet that his machine has the ability to call in to get messages. In which case, like you say, just use that and disable the phone system one. If not, get a new machine for a few bucks.

[trader_4]

Interesting, so there are standard protocols. But that description seems old and covers analog phones wired to the central office. Sounds like Micky has VOIP and I wonder if they continued those?

[gfretwell]

I am guessing if you are on the phone at the time it goes to the FiOS voice mail. I never set up the telco voice mail on my phone so I don't have that problem. I have call waiting and 9 other features I seldom use as part of the bundle. The call waiting gives me a little chirp if I am on the phone and a call comes in. I can switch to the other party or conference us all in together. Usually is it Rachel from Card Services or "Apple/Microsoft support" tho. They never leave a message.

[hubops]

Our Panasonic cordless handsets indicate "Missed Call" on the little lcd display - but not specifically "Voicemail". So it kinda sorta half-works .. lets us know when to pick up and check for the voicemail dashing dialtone. Why do you find that picking up the handset to check for voicemails such a chore ? I do it a couple times per day for just checking ... after I've been away for a few hours sometimes when I get up in the morning - not a big deal. John T.

[Anonymous]

On our Comcast/Xfinity VOIP "landline", we get the stutter dial tone, but AFAIK not all VOIP devices do.

[trader_4]

Seems to me the easy solution is to just use one home voice machine, disable the phone provider one. Micky says he needs the phone company so he can retrieve messages while away, but I bet the box he already had does that. I would think every machine for many decades has allowed you to retrieve messages while away using a code you enter by touch tone. And if his doesn't, you can find one that does for not much on Ebay.

[Dean Hoffman]

Can you forward your calls from your landline to your cellphone? Is there some way to use wifi to do it?

[Peter]

We also have a Panasonic cordless handset system which includes it's own voice mail recorder in the base unit. We use Comcast VOIP. We don't use the Panasonic's voice mail system and leave it turned off (there's a push on/push off switch for that on the base unit. The entire system can be configured to respond or not to respond to a signal apparently sent by Comcast when there's a new voicemail message in our Comcast voicemail in box. (Panasonic refers to this as Voice Mail tone detection). When that feature is turned on, the text, "Voicemail msg. via phone co." is displayed on every handset's LCD display, and a LED message indicator light on the top of every handset flashes slowly whenever there's a new, unheard telco voicemail message. You can also store your telco's voice mail access phone number so the phone will automatically dial the number and access your telco voice mail messages when you press a soft key that gains the label ""Access". These features are entire independent of the phone base's built in voice mail system - which as I already said we keep turned off.

Therefore, Micky's problem seems to be with detecting voice mail calls on his Verizon voicemail, (his stand-along voice mail machine sounds as though it is working properly) the reason for his inability to detect a new Verizon voice mail without lifting the receiver sounds related to his telephone equipment. Either it doesn't have the capacity to detect telco voicemail, or it does but he doesn't have it configured to do that. (Maybe he should consult the user's manual for his phone.) By the way, my Panasonic system was manufactured in 2015 so it's not exactly a brand new feature. For reference, I'm using a phone in the Panasonic KX-TGE4** series. I believe that some of their phones in the KX-TGE3** series have the same feature. I'm sure the feature can be found in other brands of home cordless phone systems.

[danny burstein]

[snipppppp]

Our phones here at home, which are attached to a (pseudo) landline, do, indeed, have a visual indication that there's "central office" v-mail waiting for us.

This is courtesy of the standardized notification between most phone service providers (not all, especially not all VOIP types) and... just about all of the better quality/featured "wireless" phone sets. [a]

In our case it's one of the many Panasonic DECT systems, which sell for $100 to $200 depending on the features of the base and how many handsets you get.

(higher prices, too...)

So yes, there's a light on the handsets which blinks when theirs v-mail waiting at the central server.

(Normally we have the cordless phone's own v-mail shut OFF and just use the one at the central office).

Note that when we first got similar systems way,way, back the central office v-mail did NOT activate the phone's blinkenlicht. But that changed very roughly 10 years ago.

[a] The "base" phone, which is directly plugged into the (pseudo) landline wire, also lights up.

[micky]

It used to give a little chirp, but since FIOS, it plays maybe 3 chirps and the screen on the phone lights up with the other number.

Today the screen gave the last name of one of my best friends, but not the right phone number. And no message left.

I despise most of those callers but Rachel said she was very lonely because so many people dislike her. I commiserated and she agreed to go out with me next time she's in Baltimore, or next time I'm in.....wait, she was about to tell me where she lived when she got another call. That's okay. I'd rather get togeher here.

I have her whatsapp number.

I have to go now. Soha G. Ryyash is calling.

[Clare Snyder]

I use the machine and call in remote when out of town. All machines should have a remote retrieval option

[Tekkie©]

On Tue, 05 Jan 2021 09:44:45 -0500, [e-mail] posted for all of us to digest...

You already extended your car warranty? :-)

[gfretwell]

For some reason, when I say I am very interested in an extended warranty on my 97 Honda, they hang up.