Why does voicemail say "message will be saved for 21 days," but instead save them indefinitely & refuse new VMs when box fills?

[rick1441]

I have a feeling my issue may not be phone-model related, but for the record I am still using my nine-year-old VZW basic phone (Motorola E815).

Just as it always has, the voicemail prompt that comes on after I've listened to a VM says to press 7 to delete, or 9 to save for 21 days.

Well, for quite awhile now, it is actually saving permanently when I press 9, instead of just 21 days.  And then if the box gets full it refuses to let  callers leave messages, and tells me to manually delete old messages so that new messages can be received.

This change actually began over three years ago, but it hasn't been a problem until recently.  I really don't want to have to do mailbox cleanup and it's not just laziness...there's some psychology involved (but I won't go into that here lol).

Anyway, why is the system still telling me messages will only be saved for 21 days, but instead letting the box fill up?  IIRC (and maybe I don't), I think it may have always kept messages longer than 21 days, *BUT* until 3 years ago, *automatically* deleted the oldest ones as needed to make room for new ones.  (I do know for sure that it was in 2012 that the behavior abruptly changed.)

Regardless, is there a way to get the system to return to *automatically* deleting old messages, whether it's at the stated 21 days, or when it needs the space to accept new ones?

Or did VZW just change the way the VM system works three years ago without ever bothering to change the prompts and FAQS (which still cite a 21-day auto-deletion policy)?

Thanks.

[vzw_customer_support]

rick1441

Having a 9 year old phone still functional is an incredible feat! How many messages do you have saved? How often do you call into your voicemail to review your messages? Each time you listen to your message and choose to save it, it will save for another 21 days. Some people keep treasured messages from family in their voicemail so sometimes a message is not removed right at the 21 day mark. I would highly recommend removing old/unneeded messages to ensure new messages have room to be saved.

ChristopherM_VZW
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If my response answered your question please click the _Correct Answer_ button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

[rick1441]

Christopher-

Thanks for the reply.  Yeah, the Moto E815 is one sturdy phone.  I have my eye on a Samsung Galaxy Note phablet like the Note 4 my partner has, but I keep putting it off until I start traveling more.

Anyway, I usually have about 18-20 voicemails stored.  Currently it's at 15 after I recorded some of the most recent messages that I wanted to keep to pc (using my VOIP line's call-record function), and then deleted them so that I could receive more.

But I should point out that I *haven't* been re-saving any old messages after re-listening to them, at least for months...instead I just "skip."  In fact, I haven't re-listened or re-saved any of the 5-7 oldest ones (including some longish one) since shortly after they were created back in 2012, but they're still there.  I *have* skipped over them with # a number of times as the header was being announced, until I discovered that there was an option to have messages played newest-first.

Any other suggestions?

[deloused · Accepted solution]

The voicemail system Verizon had in your region before might have been different. Mine has always worked the way you describe, (since 2001). If I hit 9 to save it it would advise me of the 21 days. If I checked the voicemail after 21 days the messages would still be there, but would let me know they were marked for deletion, and I could erase, re-save them for 21 days, or skip/hang up and they'd still be in there until actually hitting 7 on each message to erase. In checking all the settings it doesn't seem like there is a way to change it for individual users, but that it's set in the voicemail server itself, likely as a 'soft erase' policy to avoid customers losing important or sentimental messages if they forget to re-save them in time.

You may like the different visual voicemail app options on the smartphones you mentioned when you do decide to upgrade, as they allow for some more options, such as listening to any message in any order you want, delete without listening to any messages etc.

[rick1441]

deloused -

Very interesting observations.  I'll first wait awhile to see if there's more feedback, but  I'll likely end up selecting your answer as the solution (in this case more of a "likely" solution...and also more 'informational" than "actionable" as there probably wouldn't be any way I could use it to revert to auto-deletion with this phone).

One other thought I had:  At some point -- don't recall when -- I changed my VM options to play envelope information before the message.  I wonder if somehow that could have also modified how deletion works?  I think I'll play around with that a little, although your idea about different voicemail servers behaving differently sounds much more likely.  If that *is* the case, VZW should really change their prompts to reflect what's actually going on in each case.

[vzw_customer_support]

Rick1441, this is certainly an unusual situation. I don't blame you for being inquisitive. Let's start to get to the reasoning as to why the voice mails may be saving for a longer time than the 21 days. So that I can dive deeper into your account, I am going to send you a private message to review what is happening.
VeronicaM_VZW
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If my response answered your question please click the �Correct Answer� button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

[deloused]

You're right it should be more straightforward. Good idea on envelope info, I know changing those settings in the past played extra details, but I didn't notice an affect on deletions. Maybe there's some different options around that.  I'm not sure how much customization Verizon gets around what the prompts say so that could also be why. Their engineers install it on each switch but they don't make the voicemail programs, they are products of other companies like Lucent, Motorola and Comverse for example so they are usually pretty standard. I remember a few years back they notified us they were switching platforms in my state from Lucent to Comverse, and the recorded voice on the prompts sounded slightly different and a few of the menu options changed to different numbers, but I didn't notice any other changes. Actually the prompts and recorded voice then sounded just like the ones when I'd call people that had Sprint as their carrier.

[rick1441]

Thanks, PM reply sent.

[rick1441]

Hi, VeronicaM_VZW

Have you been able to gain any insight using the information I PM'd you?

Thanks,

Rick