Pls save voicemail msg without needing to press pound # key

[dillpickle]

Dear Fongo/Freephoneline staff,

I have recently signed up for a Freephoneline after people on this forum have told me that FPL can send a copy of the voicemail to my email inbox as an attachment. So grateful for this convenience.

I gave my FPL phone number to a family member. She said that she left me a voicemail but I never got an email from FPL with the attached voicemali. I tried calling my own FPL number and leaving a voicemali for myself. Still no FPL voice message in my email inbox. I then figured out what the problem was. You can't just speak your message and hang up. For the message to be saved, the person needs to press the pound (#) key, at which point the computerized-lady's voice will say "Your message has been saved"

Dear FreePhoneLine/Fongo staff/developers, please don't require callers to press the pound key to save. Please save the message when the person hangs up.
People are very used to speaking their message and just hanging up. On our regular cell phones, we could leave voicemails by just talking and hanging up. When I call regular home phone lines or office numbers, I can just speak my message and hang up. I repeat: Please save the message when the person hangs up. Please don't require pressing the pound key.

What's especially problematic is that people are not told by the computerized lady's voice to press pound to save the message. All the caller hears when they call my FPL number is: "The person you are trying to reach is not available. Please leave a message." The computerized lady does not warn the caller that the call will not be saved if they just hang up.

[TheHardy]

This is a new one for me... I will have to test this, as this was never the case before. If indeed this is the new default behavior, it does sound cumbersome.

[TheHardy]

Tested... no key press of any kind, original FPL acct (not BP or DV) and the voicemail was delivered, email attach sent just fine... Odd.

[FONGO_steve]

Pound key is not mandatory on the system. The voicemail will be saved either when the phone is hung up or when pound is pressed. The majority of people just hang up as there really isn't anything to do after pressing # and staying on the line!

[dillpickle]

FONGO_steve and TheHardy,
Thanks for your posts. I tried calling my FreePhoneLine number again, left a voicemail and just hung up without pressing pound. I got the MP3 voicemail in my email.


I wonder why the last time I tried this experiment about 3 days ago, I did not get the voicemail when I did not press pound and I got the voicemail when I did press pound.

[TheHardy]

Your "3-day ago" test ... was the message LONG enough to trigger the voicemail? There is not really a minimum duration that I am aware of (as I have had NOISY receiver hangups transmitted as voicemails, and errant key presses, both very short duration ~2 secs?). But just as a matter of asking, was it long enough, was the mic maybe somehow muted (hand covering, speaking softly?) which may have confused the system into NOT recognizing that there was any audio in the voicemail? I did a test on this with the mic muted, waited 5 sec and hung up (making sure not to generate any noise) and did _NOT_ get a blank voicemail from it. Shows up okay in the call log, but no voicemail generated.

Any chance of that?

I suppose troubleshooting something that appears to be working correctly now is pointless, but this is something to keep an eye on should it arise again at a later time for you or another user.