How I found 86 unheard voice messages

For months now people have been telling me, "I left you a message," and I often think huh, it wasn't on our machine.  It happened often enough that we realized there must be a real technical problem but we didn't know why or how to fix it or even how to tell people.  Our house phone used to take messages but it hasn't shown us a message in several months and so we've just been trying to call people back if we missed their call.

Michael told me one day, "It's Comcast's fault, they're not giving us our messages."  That was confusing to me, because our house phone had the voice message system, not the Comcast service.  And as I thought about that some more, I wondered, "Or does it?"

So I called Comcast's technical support line, which just confused me with their automated system.  I got discouraged and hung up and several hours later thought, "Well, how do most people get their messages?  They call their own number."

So I called our house number, and Comcast started this whole, "Welcome to your Voice Mail Box.  To set up your Voice Mail Box, please press one."  On and on, I went through setting up a password and listening to all of their disclaimers and blah blah blah, and finally I heard, "You have now set up your Voice Mail Box. [long pause] You have eighty six unheard voice messages."

It was like even the automated lady couldn't believe it.  I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I heard that.  86?  86!

Then I learned two incredibly lame things about Comcast's Voice Mail system:
1. They don't tell you the date and time that the message was left.
2. You have to listen to the entire message before you can delete it or do anything.  There is no button you can press while listening to skip it or delete it.

For having 86 messages, these two incredibly lame things were going to make it all very painful.

The second message was from my Dad, and started with, "I would say this is Grandpa Ross calling, but not yet."  That was the second moment that made my stomach drop to the floor.  Not yet Grandpa?  As in before Jane was born??  Just so you know, everyone, Jane is turning 18 months old this month.  Yeah.

Then I spent the next 40 minutes listening to messages, and writing down who each one was from and what they were for.

I heard two messages that my mom left last October when she had a stroke.  Her voice was slurred and she sounded fatigued.  That was gut drop moment number 3, remembering that and hearing how ill she was.  I heard Michael's brother and his family call on my birthday, in April, and sing me Happy Birthday.  I missed that.  That was moment number 4.

It was AWFUL.  Like here's a soundtrack of important moments from the last year that you MISSED and never acknowledged!  But the most awful part was when I got to message number 82.  There were some weird beeps, and then I heard a computer voice say something about, "xml application" and "200 input errors."  Then the phone started beeping the way it does when it's off the hook.  The call was disconnected.   So I called the voice message system back, and it said, "You have 88 unheard voice messages."

WHAT?

And you CAN'T SKIP or DELETE EARLY.  You have to listen to every single one, all the way.

I started back with number one, number two from my dad, got all the way to mom's stroke in October (about number 20) and then hung up and called Michael and complained about the whole damn situation.

Then he says, "Oh, you can just log in and see everything online and delete them that way."

Facepalm.

So I did.  It took me about two minutes to delete everything and listen to the last six messages.  (This is an hour after I had started the whole process).  Sigh.  But I noticed something: the first time I listened to all the messages, I felt so awful about missing everything and wanted to apologize to everyone.  The second time, I wanted to kill you all for ever calling me.  =)  But!  Luckily it's all over now, and we have hopefully fixed the problem and we should be getting your messages now.  I am sorry, though, if you called us in the last - eighteen months! - and didn't hear back.  Really sorry.

Here are some interesting numbers for you (since my sister says we are weird and OCD in our family about counting things):
52 of the messages were for me
9 were for Michael
23 were for the household/both of us
2 were hang-up calls
10 were from my mom
1 was a wrong number
36 were from family members
8 were from friends
20 were from church members
21 were business related
3 were work-related
We got 3 messages for Christmas
and 1 on my birthday


p.s. It's not that we haven't gotten any messages in the last 18 months.  Our house phone took messages a lot during Jane's first 12-14 months or so.  I think the house phone got unplugged a few months ago and that screwed up the setting that had message answering turned on, so the majority of the messages we didn't receive have been more recent.  But it does seem to have missed messages intermittently for as long as we've had the phone.  Grr.