Hello, everyone, I have had Sprint for three years now in the Portland, Or area. My only problem with my service is a lot of my incoming calls go straight to my voicemail. It is intermittent, but does happen almost daily. I would say one out of every four calls does this. It happens at work and at home...anywhere. Other than that, my reception is flawless. I have been using a Sanyo SCP-5300. Yes, it is old, but I have had this problem for the past two years. Calls to Sprint are no help. Is it possible that it's the phone? I am ready for a new one but do not want to sign up for two more years yet till this is resolved. I am about ready to switch to T-Mobile. If it is a phone issue, which flip phone would you recommend?
Welcome to CDMA. I have the exact same problem back home. There is no real way to solve this problem, sorry. It could be caused by many factors. I know, it sucks.
If this was a common problem, I could accept that but I am the only person that I know that has this problem to the extent that I do. However, I did have this problem with AT&T back in '03.
There's two reasons that cause this to happen. 1) You could be on the border of two different network ID's (switches). CDMA networks are set up with SID's (system identification's) and then those are further broken down into NID's (network ID's). For example the Los Angeles, CA area might have 8 or 10 different switches to serve the area even though it's all on the same SID (4145). If you happen to be on or near the border of where two different towers are broadcasting two different NID's then many incoming calls will get lost in the paging channel and instead will be directed to voicemail. Very common problem and I've seen it happen many times. 2) congestion in the paging channel can cause this as well. Too many users using the same switch at the same time. Either way you are screwed. Sprint and any other CDMA carrier's customer service will never know how to solve this problem and will likely come up with excuses such as trying to blame it on your phone. So don't waste your time trying to argue with them about it. It's something that simply cannot be fixed unless the CDMA vendors themselves can come up with a future software platform upgrade. And that's not very likely to happen any time soon.
It's not as prone to it because the technology works differently. But yes it can also happen with GSM. I've had some friends with GSM tell me it does happen on occasion.
I have experience this issue and new it wouldn't be worth arguing about, so instead I compsed an ecare email saying I understood the problem and wondered if I could have my early nights and weekends for a discount to make up for the slight inconvience. And so they did :biggrin: So from here I'm trying to find a pattern to where it happens to me now so I can avoid those areas in town. I must admit I don't phone calls from people on my phone other than my wife to often so far, but anytime someone other than my wife has tried to call me it seems, it goes straight to voicemail.... Maybe my wife has something to do with it Cheers, Stu
Also remember that if you're using data and the little data symbols/arrows on the screen are flashing you cannot receive calls during those periods. So it's best to always disable Vision after every use. That's what I do.
This problem has nothing to do with the type of phone you use. The problem affects all phones the same (even the latest and greatest). Until the CDMA vendors themselves (not Sprint) come up with a software fix in the network equipment paging channel this problem will be here.
