gonzalez@bbn.com (05/08/89)
This is a follow-up to my posting regarding difficulty with a new PhoneMate 7200 answering machine. After several hours of busy signals, I managed to get through to the toll-free help line listed in the owner's manual. After asking about Call Waiting (I don't have it), CPC (I had it turned off), and callers pausing for more than a second (I tested it myself by counting the seconds aloud until I was cut off), the woman told me to take the machine to a local service center. Taking a brand-new machine to a service center is a bit much, so I returned the machine to the store with description of my experience. It is my suspicion that the machine simply has a problem with the threshold used for detecting speech. I could probably include instructions in the outgoing message to speak loudly, but doesn't inspire confidence, and doesn't work for faint long-distance calls. Since the problem with callers being cut off was noted in Consumer Reports in two earlier series of machines, I expect that this is a problem that won't be designed out soon. I would advise purchasers to bear my experience, and the Consumer Reports data, in mind when considering PhoneMate products. Neat features don't compensate for poor performance. By the way, a friend had similar trouble with an earlier model, so this experience was not entirely surprising. I have switched to a Panasonic with similar features. As noted in my earlier message, my experience with Panasonic answering machines has been consistently positive. Good thing I have friends and relatives willing to adopt the old ones :-). -Jim. Jim Gonzalez AT&T: 617-873-2937 BBN Systems and Technologies Corp. ARPA: gonzalez@bbn.com Cambridge, Massachusetts UUCP: ...seismo!bbn!gonzalez