Question for all cell phone users

[krissel]

...which I suppose is most of you.

I'm curious how many of you have experienced the following, and if so, how often and what carrier?

Several times when I call my Mom's cell phone (from my cell) it rings maybe 4 times and then sends me off to her voice mail. This is while I know her phone is on and she is expecting my call. It can happen at any time even at 1 AM when I know there aren't too many people on the lines which might make it impossible to connect. I will try again in a couple minutes and it may happen again. Maybe even a third time but if I persist it will eventually connect. Usually I give up and call the house phone only to find my Mom was just sitting there waiting for the call and the phone didn't even ring. Weather is not a consideration nor is movement.

Have you encountered this? Often?

I'm trying to figure out if this is a carrier problem or something that is common to all.

We're on Verizon Wireless.

Thanks.

[dolphin]

Kris,
It has happened to me when I call my brother. I am on Verizon and he is on AT&T. When I do get him on the phone...he says the same thing..."It didn't ring". Very curious!

[Gregg]

Just happened to us 2 nights ago. Our son was calling and got two rings, then voice mail. I almost called T-Mobile to find out if that was a setting I could change. I happened to be working in the basement at the time, but was expecting his call, so I had the phone with me. He called on the land line after failing to get through (no minutes used with Family Plan on cell phone). I then took the cell phone upstairs, and he tried again with the same result. After another call to our land line, I had him try once more. That time he got through.

We figured it was a signal strength problem. The signal was low in the basement. It varied upstairs, but at least got to a strong signal and stayed there awhile.

[chriskleeman]

Hi Kris,

Some very strange things like that do happen, but very occasionally... I have US Cellular, and I generally don't have too many problems connecting with Verizon customers, nothing like that on a regular basis... and other cell phone carriers seem to connect up ok.

What does happen with annoying frequency, about once a month, a voice-mail will get lost in the system and not show up sometimes for almost a week.

And, last week, my daughter did say she tried to call me 3 times, and it never showed up as a missed call on my phone.

An imperfect technology, for sure!

Chris K

[Paddy]

Yup - it's happened to me - several times in the last little while. I will be cruising along and suddenly I get that missed call beep - even though I haven't been anywhere else, I wasn't ON the phone when the person tried to call me and my phone was right where I could hear it. No rhyme nor reason, unless being in slightly different parts of the same building (store, convention center) affected the coverage. A couple of weeks ago it was at the One of A Kind Craft Show - at the big exhibition hall at the Canadian National Exhibition and just before that it was at the grocery store. The annoying thing is that there can be a 15-20 minute delay before I get the missed call beep! And the weird thing is that it doesn't seem to matter WHERE I am in the building when I go to return the call - it's not like there are known dead spots.

Glad to know that it's not just Rogers peculiarities. I don't recall it happening much with Verizon when I was living in MA, but it did occasionally.

[Bruce_F]

QUOTE

I'm curious how many of you have experienced the following, and if so, how often and what carrier?

I've been with Verizon for a few years. A year ago, September, my girlfriend and I got identical new LG phones and started on a family plan.

What you're describing happens to me frequently, but not so much with my girlfriend. I have complained to Verizon numerous times. They have checked both phones and found "nothing wrong". Both phones have had the firmware upgrades to no avail.

I've been at my wit's end over this. Verizon has been unresponsive for the most part. They told me I could replace my phone with a "rebuilt" one but I haven't done that... yet.

My contract with Verizon ends in September next year. That's when I plan to end my ties with them. Most likely, I'll give AT&T a shot. Hmm... iPhone...

[Bruce_F]

One thing I should add is... the problem I have with my phone only happens when I'm calling my girlfriend's phone. I haven't experienced the problem when I call anyone else.

[kimmer]

Pretty much ditto what everyone has said. Calls don't come through - even when we are up the road almost on top of the cell phone tower (so it's not signal strength), and the missed call alert doesn't show up for 30 min, or longer ... and voice mail messages have been taking up to 3 hours to show up.

This all started about 3 months ago when we upgraded our phone, so I have always attributed it to that, but I don't know for sure.

I do know that during the recent storm -- cell phones didn't work. Not even those that were charged.

[Xairbusdriver]

Sitting on a cell phone tower is highly discouraged in this part of the country, may be different in other parts. But there are usually at least two towers involved in any connection. And there could be a signal strength/quality problem in either one. That tower's connection to the wired system could be swamped by other users or maintenance.

Then there are the problems with reception inside buildings, especially those with more metal construction or near wiring. Not to mention (although I'm about to) the azimuth alignment of the phones antennae with any disruptive/reflective objects as well as the tower antennae.

It all boils down to a very low powered radio signal and those kinds of signals are far less stable than other kinds of physical connections, even if that might be a string between two cans!

Most cell phone transmitters have an automatic, self-starting generator built in. But those require fuel and and don't always start when needed.

WARNING: Further afield opinions follow.
Most of us seem willing to ignore these 'events' until they reach our own level of frustration. So far, those levels seem to be lower than the suppliers desire to improve service. But that may just be my cynical opinion. I wondered last week, when one hand at the cable company said my modem was bad while the other said the hub was being repaired so a new modem wouldn't make any difference, what would have happened to their highly advertised 'phone' service during the outage. Just seems follish to allow any one company/technology have too much control in our lives. Now, that, of course, doesn't apply to government...!

[krissel]

Thanks everyone for the input.  


I guess we aren't alone in this. We've been thinking that maybe Verizon is doing it on purpose to force us to call a land line which might incur a charge, though after 9 PM it's free anyway. Mom also thought there was something wrong with her phone. At least we know it isn't just us.

[sandbox]

QUOTE(kimmer @ Dec 7 2007, 12:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Pretty much ditto what everyone has said. Calls don't come through - even when we are up the road almost on top of the cell phone tower (so it's not signal strength), and the missed call alert doesn't show up for 30 min, or longer ... and voice mail messages have been taking up to 3 hours to show up.

This all started about 3 months ago when we upgraded our phone, so I have always attributed it to that, but I don't know for sure.

I do know that during the recent storm -- cell phones didn't work. Not even those that were charged.

Really? were the towers hit?
I have had service right through the storms, lost Landlines, (phone, power, and cable).  My satellite stopped working when the storm was in the south but the antenna inside the dish let me access local channels.
How long did you loose cell service? Do you think it was because everyone was trying to talk at once?

[danf63]

It happens to me and am I glad you posted this!

Sometimes I'll get a voicemail message and I see that the call came in just a few seconds before (I guess, the amount of time to land on voicemail and leave a message). I called T-Mobile and they acted as if it were something brand new to them. That was about 3 months ago. I actually like T-Mobile, but I thought if I ever wanted out of my contract, I would use that as an excuse.

Dan

[jcarter]

It hasn't happened to us yet, I use ATT(old Cingular).  I do know that in our area my signal is not good unless I stand on the roof, I did that once to test it.  Or go up the street about 500 yards. Sort of impractical! There is a hill between us and the closest tower, and West Falmouth MA has the same problem, about 3 miles south of us.

  So we don't use the cell all that much from home.  And it will revert to "emergency calls only", which with ATT is a symptom of low signal strength.  You have to power the phone on and off several times in good signal area to get it back to normal.
(Have land line and Skype.)

During the recent storm, we lost power for a couple of days, and this time the land line was out as well as the cell service.  Heard that there wasn't enough battery backup and the generators didn't have enuf fuel for several days.  The Verizon phone service guy was cruising around in his big truck with a generator aboard, charging up the batteries in all the local sub-stations. He said that the battery backup was pretty short lived.
Cable was out for 2 days.
Our systems probably should prepare for a longer period of fuel, battery power and whatever they need.
Jane

[kimmer]

QUOTE(sandbox @ Dec 8 2007, 03:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Really? were the towers hit?

Sorry, should have been clearer. Yes the storm damaged some towers and knocked out service.

Verizon was faster than our power company though, and had everything repaired within 24 hours.

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Dec 7 2007, 10:21 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sitting on a cell phone tower is highly discouraged in this part of the country, may be different in other parts.

Gee, there goes my favorite past time if I come visit you and your lovely wife. What kind of a state do you live in that won't let me climb the towers?

[gunug]

I have had this problem with two phones (one Verizon and one AT&T) within my house.  I was testing a menu listing for my son's cellphone to make sure I had entered it correctly and while certain noises took place on the television (more about this later) his cellphone never rang even though it was the correct number.  I tried it 5 minutes later it worked!

The noises: I'm positive that I'm not the only one that gets these but there are these vaguely electronic sounding noises I've gotten on the television when one of our cellphones is about to ring.  We don't have cable so this is just something with the sound portion of the broadcast television bands.  The sound will take place and then 10 seconds later the phone will generally ring.  Both phones get a good strong signal (3-4 bars) in the house.  I've also picked up this precursor sound on the wired phone in the house upon occasion.  Sometimes I get the sounds and the phone never rings (like above) but I only have one instance where I know someone had placed a call and the phone didn't ring.