The telephone in my flat is as far away from my bed as possible, whilst still being in the same apartment.
At first glance, one might think that this is a bad thing—I am, after all, usually the only person living in my flat, so one would think it would be an awfully convenient thing to have the base station, phone charger, and everything, right smack next to my bed. But as it turns out, it’s better off at the far end of the flat because of one annoying feature.
Voicemail.
In fact when I first moved in, I was unaware that I had voicemail. I had requested and arranged for a DSL line with as few features as possible—and making sure that I was not going to be listed in the Weimar phone directory (I put a premium on my privacy). It was about a month later when one of my friends in the US told me that she had left a message on my voicemail, much to my surprise. A day or two later one of my colleagues, who lives in Weimar, arrived and helped me setup the voicemail.
One would think that would have been the end of my troubles.
Unfortunately it was just the beginning.
You see, once voicemail was set up, it started working properly with one of the most annoying features known to mankind: It calls me.
That’s right, if somebody has called and left a message, it calls me to let me know that there is a message waiting.
And it calls randomly at all hours of day and night.
If I stumble home late at night and don’t bother to check the phone, you can be sure that the phone will ring sometime after midnight, informing me that a message is waiting. Or 3am. Or whenever.
It’s an incredibly obnoxious and annoying feature—and quite disturbing, especially if the I’ve been foolish enough to take the handset to bed with me. Nothing like a wake up call at 3am.
Wow, that sounds like the most annoying feature ever. I would go insane! Surely there is a way to make it stop calling you??
I’d call you at 9PM EST just for the heck of it and leave a message, but then you’d call me at 10AM GMT to return the favor. 🙂
The german speakers who live here (ocassionally) have yet to figure out the system. Perhaps I’ll ask them to make a concerted effort.
What a horrible, intrusive feature! It would drive me absolutely NUTS.
I sure hope that you can get help to modify (or disable!) it.
Hi there,
found you via Eurotrippen.
Here is a german manual for the T-Net voicemail:
http://www.t-com.de/dlp/eki/downloads/t/T-NetBox_Kurz_10_2005.pdf
If you give the computer lady a 3223* in the main menu, you’ll get a decent english speaking _man_ instead 😉
other inputs:
332: notification call at another number
333: notification via SMS to a T-Mobile cell
36: no notification if the caller left no message
3273: turn the whole crap off
Sebastian,
Vielen Dank! It worked!
I defiantely need the voicemail system turned on for work et al, but having it in English will make it soooooooo much easier.
I really cannot say thanks enough!
You’re welcome 🙂
In case you didn’t figure it out yourself yet: At menu point 3311 you’re able to set up your preferred notification times (e.g. not at 3 am *g*) – seperate for weekend and workdays
Sebastian- I have to say that the menu choices really don’t tell you the range of options. I never would have guessed that I could limit the calling times with how those options were described until I got to the last 1. You must have spent a lot of time with this system to know it so well!
I found the timeframe-function accidentally this morning, elsewise I would have mentioned it in my last comment.
You inspired me to re-activate the voicemail after years. But I begin to remember why I turned it off…
I love the time frame function. That is worth its weight in gold…
Sebastian rocks! We’ve had out Tcom mailbox turned off since practically day 1. I’m not even sure what it’s for, other than to annoy you…
[…] what I can only presume is some perverse form of revenge for revealing voice mail secrets on my blog, T-Com, the phone company, has managed to get its […]
[…] I need to thank Sebastian profusely for his comment on T-Com. Telling me how to switch Voicemail into English, as well as the helpful “36” command that will […]