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My family used to have a hilarious issue where callers hanging up in the moment between the last ring and the answering machine would get called back by the ans

by XaspR8d 12y ago

My family used to have a hilarious issue where callers hanging up in the moment between the last ring and the answering machine would get called back by the answering machine. Thus every so often we would get messages that were the sound of a phone ringing followed by "hello! ... hello? ... ". Never really figured out why; it wasn't a feature of the machine as far as we could tell and it simply went away after a few years. On topic, I think the phone system's routing is much less perfect than people think. But I can't imagine how you would go about reporting this; I have a hard time finding anyone at my telecom's customer service that even understands the most basic tethering questions or what plan I'm on.

kingnight 12y ago
We used to have the same problem. Would love to know the reason why it happened.
Zelphyr 12y ago
That or OP has a Macbook, uses TOR, and reads Boing Boing.
dade_ 12y ago
Three way calling (conference calling): Subscriber A (who has 3 way calling) calls Subscriber B and an answering machine or modem answers the call; Subscriber A hangs up and quickly picks up the phone to make another call or the receiver bounces when they hung up (hookflash). The phone system thinks Sub A tried to conference in another caller so it put subscriber B on hold (instead of disconnect), but since the three way call failed, it attempts to reconnect Sub A to the call on hold with Sub B. To do this, it rings back Subscriber A. Subscriber A's answers their ringing phone, but hear nothing. Subscriber B's answering machine records the system calling Subscriber A back (ringback tones) and the confused "hello?, HELLO?!?" from Subscriber A who hears nothing as the answering machine is silent. This also sometimes happened when a friend of mine tried to setup a modem game with me for DOOM at 2am. If the connection failed for some reason and did a hookflash (and my modem was still trying to connect), it attempted to reconnect him by ringing his line back and waking up his entire family. When his mom answered the call to my screeching modem that was still trying to connect: BUSTED. So lesson learned: disable 3 way calling. You probably don't use it and it often results in this absurd but sometimes hilarious behaviour. Playing DOOM at 2am will result in terrible grades in high school.

by XaspR8d 12y ago

kingnight 12y ago

We used to have the same problem. Would love to know the reason why it happened.

Zelphyr 12y ago

That or OP has a Macbook, uses TOR, and reads Boing Boing.

dade_ 12y ago

Three way calling (conference calling): Subscriber A (who has 3 way calling) calls Subscriber B and an answering machine or modem answers the call; Subscriber A hangs up and quickly picks up the phone to make another call or the receiver bounces when they hung up (hookflash). The phone system thinks Sub A tried to conference in another caller so it put subscriber B on hold (instead of disconnect), but since the three way call failed, it attempts to reconnect Sub A to the call on hold with Sub B. To do this, it rings back Subscriber A. Subscriber A's answers their ringing phone, but hear nothing. Subscriber B's answering machine records the system calling Subscriber A back (ringback tones) and the confused "hello?, HELLO?!?" from Subscriber A who hears nothing as the answering machine is silent. This also sometimes happened when a friend of mine tried to setup a modem game with me for DOOM at 2am. If the connection failed for some reason and did a hookflash (and my modem was still trying to connect), it attempted to reconnect him by ringing his line back and waking up his entire family. When his mom answered the call to my screeching modem that was still trying to connect: BUSTED. So lesson learned: disable 3 way calling. You probably don't use it and it often results in this absurd but sometimes hilarious behaviour. Playing DOOM at 2am will result in terrible grades in high school.