Why are my deleted voicemail messages being resurrected?

May 2, 2006 10:00 AM

Why are my deleted voicemail messages being resurrected?

My old cell phone died a few months ago, and I got my number ported to a replacement. Since then, I've noticed a strange glitch in my voicemail that never happened with my old phone. Every now and then, I'll check my voicemail to retrieve a new message, and instead I find myself listening to an old message I deleted long ago. For example, this past weekend I checked my voicemail and got a message that I deleted way back in mid-March. The resurrected message will play as if it is the new message I just recieved. As you can imagine, it causes quite a bit of confusion on my part to hear an old voicemail message and think it's new.

Same carrier (Verizon) I had before, living in the same place, same phone number. I've been travelling quite a bit lately, but mostly to the same places I travelled before this started happening. I'm not positive, but I think I get most of the resurrected messages while away from home.

So, why are my messages coming back from the dead?

posted by geeky to technology (5 comments total)

Same thing happened to me on Verizon years ago. My guess is they had some technical issues at their end and are erring on the side of bringing back old messages instead of deleting new ones.
posted by exogenous at 10:02 AM on May 2, 2006

Sounds like their server had a disk crash and the backup point they restored to had your messages but not the deleted flags.
posted by tommasz at 10:19 AM on May 2, 2006

About a year ago I had a variation of this problem with Verizon. But, it sent me a message I had *left* for someone as a new message on my phone, a few weeks after I had left it,(and it did it a few different times). It happened a month or so after I left the message on my friend's phone. It freaked me out. I don't want to derail, but has anyone else had this happen? Could it all be part of the same issue with Verizon?
posted by 6:1 at 10:21 AM on May 2, 2006

6:1, that happens with Verizon when the person who receives the message never retrieves it. Eventually, it expires and is returned to sender (as a new message). I know this because I went a few months without checking my voicemail, and everyone was telling me that they were getting messages from themselves that they had originally left me. One month sounds like just the right amount of time for a message to expire.
posted by Turd Ferguson at 10:56 AM on May 2, 2006

thanks T.F.!
posted by 6:1 at 11:06 AM on May 2, 2006