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Not Receiving calls and delayed text messages

  • 15 March 2018
  • 80 replies
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80 replies

B

I want to thank everyone who took time to post about this issue--what a relief to know I was not an isolated case.  Calls going straight to voice mail, disappearing texts, etc. have been an ongoing problem for me and the 3 other phone lines covered on my plan for months now.  T-Mobile customer service has been polite, helpful, and supportive, cheerfully checking out solutions and even sending out two free cell phone signal boosters for myself and my parents (who are on my plan but live 45 min away).  BUT---NOTHING HAS WORKED!  There has been no resolution.  The final straw was when my mom could not reach my dad to come pick her up after she was finished at the doctor's office.  His phone would just not ring! My last call to T-Mobile resulted in a trouble ticket #20767332 issued Aug 27, 2018.  The tech person ran remote diagnostics on the cell phone and signal boosters and everything checked out.  I was told this was a "network issue' and that it would be referred to their engineers.  I was to allow at least 3 days for review of this ongoing issue but have heard nothing back.  My parents are unable to call me and I am unable to call them because the calls will just not go through.  This is unacceptable---I am paying for a service that is nonexistent. My parents need to be able to get in touch with me during an emergency and I need to be able to reach them to check in.  I have been a loyal TMobile customer since 2007 but I am now choosing to switch to another carrier.  I hope that relating my experience is as helpful to you all as reading about yours was for me.

U
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Same is happening to my wife's phone (LG G5). The phone will intermittently not receive messages or calls. Reboot usually corrects it and all missing texts get received. On my phone, I've had calls go directly to voice mail with phone having never rung. Is ANYONE from TMO working on this?

M

Sounds like yours may be an important clue. What good are current cell phones with only 2G. I don't think John Legere would crow about "the best 2G network!"

BTW another verified delayed text last night. Usually, it's hard to tell. Got a text at 8:55pm. Considering the sender, thought it was odd and asked when ht sent it. 5:22pm.

Suggest more people contact the FCC as per my previous message. TMO support has been very responsive even if they haven't been able to provide a solution. I suspect that, like in most big organizations, there is a limit on how many resources they can get bring to bear. A little outside shove might help.

S

My wife and I had the same problems (incoming calls went straight to voicemail and delay receiving text messages) for a while. We went to T-Mobile store and had SIM cards replaced, but the problems were not resolved. Out of frustration, I switched from 4G LTE to 2G for both our phones, we have been able to receive calls without any problem and text message delay without delay for more than two weeks now. Personally, I think that all the subject problems are related to T-Mobile 4G LTE itself. T-Mobile may have introduced bugs into its 4G LTE during the latest update by accident (?).

L

Long time customer here and I have had the same issue just yesterday. My wife who is on sprint showed me 12 outgoing calls from her phone to mine and I received no missed calls or voicemails and all the text messages she sent in a 2 hour span came in at the same time. I have had issues where group texts were not coming in and when they do the messages were never in order. Pictures being sent through text (MMS) is a whole other pain point. I have had 4 different devices all suffering the same issues over the span of 3 years now and I've had the sim card replaced so it is highly unlikely that the device is the problem. I'm a loyal customer since the days of voicestream but at this point the money i save compared to having verizon seems like im sacrificing what I need from my carrier.

M

Same problems continue here. Wife told me this afternoon she tried to call me twice from a few miles away and it told her I was out of the calling area. Of course, I was sitting at home like usual. That's a variation on going straight to voicemail. Reinforces my thoughts that it's some routing issue where it can't find our phones to give us the call. Would also explain delayed SMS; the message is held til the network can find your phone,

I am going to file a complaint with the FCC. Legere is a good CEO and once he receives some complaints from the FCC, I expect he'll put enough resources on it to get it fixed. Only problem I see is the form has limited categories of problems and ours are not in it. Will try anyway. Suggest others do also.

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=39744

I

I've been having the same problems for a while now. I first noticed it around March and the problem has followed me over from two different Tmobile devices. Many people that I know who have Tmobile have been having the same problems. I called the Tech Center but they were unable to give me a definitive solution other than buying a new Tmobile phone as a possible solution. It still happens seemingly at random. I haven't had any major problems with Tmobile since I switched to them from Verizon, but not knowing whether someone is calling you is a major deal breaker. After many years with Tmobile, I am about ready to give Verizon another try.

M

Just chiming to say that our family is experiencing the same problem. All 3 of us are on the same plan, but only I am experiencing the issue.

Me = Galaxy S7

Wife = Galaxy S9+

Daughter = Some cheap Android

I'm having the exact symptoms described in this thread. My phone reports that it's on the network just fine, but sometimes the calls go straight to voicemail or the texts arrive very late. I can get the phone "back online" by sending a text. Usually the first attempt to send the text fails, and then when I retry the send, my text goes, and then I receive all the texts I had been missing.

Y

I missed an important anticipated call today. The phone didn't ring, no missed call even though I patiently waited beside the phone. The caller had left a message and I came to know about it an hour later only after I emailed them.

I called T mobil's customer service and they mentioned changing the settings (on their end) so I won't miss call in future but I'm skeptical based on above responses.

This is unacceptable, seriously considering changing the carrier

D

Same issue here.  There are times when my wife calls me but i dont receive the call.  She would then tell me she had called me several times but my phone does not show missed calls from her. this happens also when i call her. we both have tmobile service.  other times i would get a voicemail notification although my phone hasnt ring.  the above issue occurs when my phone is in service with full bar reception. 

M

More problems this afternoon. Couldn't find my phone tho I knew it was somewhere in the house. Used my wife's phone to call it, but it would not ring. Went to voicemail.  Eventually found it otherwise. The phone did not show any of the 3 calls that went to voicemail.

Disappointing news about Consumer Cellular: they used to run only on ATT's network. Now they use TMO too, so switching would not guarantee an escape from the TMO network problem

Will try the FCC. https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

M

No improvement here and it can have bad consequences. Friday was sitting in my chair and got a call from a lawyer I help out. She complained of trying to call several times previously. Clients were sitting in her office to sign paperwork I had prepared and a question came up.

Looked at my voicemail and sure enough, there were two voicemails from within the previous hour. After we spoke, I called her back a couple of times to make sure there weren't any more missed calls.

Seriously need to look into another carrier. Consumer Cellular runs on the ATT network and gets good ratings from Consumer Reports.

M

Agreed. Support has been attentive, but they are out of ideas. The problem has been reported in all brands of phones, even an iPhone recently.

They wanted me to swap sims with my old Windows phone that I barely use and so haven't experienced the problem, but it would have been a real pain, esp. Since my daily driver Honor 6x is much faster than my old flagship Lumia 950. The Honor's camera ain't very good, but it is speedy.

Anyways, have thought from early on it was a network issue. Since it's intermittent, it's probably hard ot diagnose.5% discount making it even cheaper than our old grandfathered in family plan. Hate to leave as support has been good on TMO, but a phone that's not reliable isn't worth much.

K

do not let TMO mess with your phone it will be a complete waste of time. this is a network issue happening everywhere and until they realize this it will continue.

N

Same issue here but already for about a year. Callers get directly into VM. If they leave a message it mostly shows within a few minutes but no missed call displayed. Contacted tech support a couple of times and was recommended to do a factory reset and to get a newer phone if this does not work. I am using a Galaxy S5 which I am replacing with an S9 due to these issues. Talked last week to a colleague of mine who is using a 2 year old iPhone and he has the same issues. So the problem does not seem to be related to certain phone models or only older phones.

M

FWIW. Occurred to me that this must be some sort of routing issue. The wife sometimes gets a message that I am out of the calling area before the call goes to voicemail. Perhaps, the network is trying to route the call to another network and can't find me, even though I'm sitting at the house.

My daughter had a number that had belonged to another family. Her Walgreens prescription account kept showing a previous owners name. Walgreens put her number in and the other family showed up, even though she had the number for a couple of years. Seemed like it must have  been a problem with the Walgreen's database, but on further investigation, there appeared to be some other database that contained it. No one seemed to be able to do anything about it.

Is there some central database of cell numbers?

Was just poking around with the history of my number and it showed up as originally being with Cingular, which then became ATT wireless before I switched to Verizon for a few years because coverage by Cingular/ATT in New Orleans was so bad. Eventually switched to TMO.

No idea how that could start causing problems over the past 6-8 months, but TMO support doesn't have any better suggestions.

Don't know if many are still watching this thread or if they have left TMO as I am considering, but what is the history of the numbers that have been acting up?

M

Had a few more occurences yesterday:

in the morning I went to my bank's website. With 2 factor authentication enabled (a very good idea), it wanted to text me a code.Said ok. Code never arrived.

I eventually went back in and told it to email me. Worked fine.

When the wife got home about 3:30 pm, she complained that she had called and texted when she left work. Call went straight to voicemail and she was so disgusted she didn't bother leaving one. Suspect many more are having the problem, but if the caller doesn't leave voicemail, they don't know about it.

She also said that she had texted me when she left work.Sure enough, a few minutes after she arrive, the messages from the bank and from her arrived. the one from her was maybe 30 minutes late. The one from the bank was more delayed, maybe an hour. Of course, the timestamp on both was when I received them, not when they were sent.

Wonder if ATT has any cheap plans? Had been very happy with TMO for years, but a phone you can't rely isn't worth it.

S

Hi,

just an update

I went to a store and they swap out my sim card but that didn't fix the issue.

I've also tried online customer service, she asked me to try adding a new APNs and restart my phone but it still doesn't work.

BYOD T-Mobile data & APN settings

S

Recently switch to Tmobile from AT&T and I'm having the same issue with my HTC U11 plus.

I'm able to make calls but when I first dial a number it would have 10ish seconds of silence before it starts ringing. When people trying to call me, I would be using my phone and suddenly see a voicemail notification without the phone ringing at all.

Tried all the solutions above and no luck. Also checked my call settings ( HTC U11 - Troubleshooting - I can't receive any calls | Vodafone Ireland ) the issue persists.

M

If you don't buy a T-Mo version of a phone, it most likely will not support WiFi calling. None of my phones ever have. In any case, I agree that it's not a signal strength issue mine happens at home almost all the time and I always have 4 bars.

From what I read about the booster, you can get one for free from them as long as you are a prepaid customer.

M

I get only 1 or 2 bars when at home on the 6th floor; otherwise, I have no problems. The thing is, I spend a significant amount of time at home, so I have high hopes for the signal booster to fix my problem.

D 
magenta4993909 wrote:
I just called T-Mobile to ask for a Signal Booster in the hopes that this will fix my problem. Because I was previously told that I couldn't get one because I am using a phone not purchased from T-Mobile, I expected very little. Turns out this latest representative was exceedingly helpful and sent a booster right away and even waved the shipping fee. Thank You T-Mobile! Now let's hope that the booster makes a difference.

What was your problem that you think a signal booster will fix?  For most people, their phones support WiFi calling, which uses any WIFI that you are connected to instead of cellular service.  With that, no signal booster is needed.  Not to mention, you can't take a signal booster with you, so when you leave your house, then what?  For the issue this post is about, it clearly isn't a signal issue.  It's a service issue.

M

Call customer support; they're very helpful.

M

I just called T-Mobile to ask for a Signal Booster in the hopes that this will fix my problem. Because I was previously told that I couldn't get one because I am using a phone not purchased from T-Mobile, I expected very little. Turns out this latest representative was exceedingly helpful and sent a booster right away and even waved the shipping fee. Thank You T-Mobile! Now let's hope that the booster makes a difference.

B

Just adding myself to this list as well. My wife and I just switch to T-Mobile 2 days ago and we're already seeing text's that don't go through till hours later. We both have new Samsung Galaxy S9's. At this point I almost want to return everything before it's to late and switch to someone else.

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