Ooma Forums

Just set up & running. Using Ooma Telo with cordless handsets (not telo handsets) & wired home phones.

Does Ooma provide an audible / stuttering dial tone so you know a msg has been received? Hard to believe you need to have the Telo in line of sight to know.

Also, is there an alternative to dialing your entire number to access voicemail from a handset within your home? The phone service seems fine, but it does appear that Ooma (like Apple) is creating a service that requires proprietary equipment (telo handsets).

Thanks for your input.

No stutter tone but the voicemail waiting indicator feature (that works with voicemail subscription with landline and other phone services) on most phones plugged into Ooma will also reflect the fact that you got a voicemail.

As to getting to your VM, if not pressing the play button on the Telo, you got to dial your own number 7 digits or 10 digits.

Thanks - guess I'm a bit surprised......particularly re message retrieval. Hope I remember how to program speed dial on the things.

If you have a Telo handset you can push a single button on it to get to your voicemail.

I agree that there should be a stutter tone to indicate new voicemail, AND a quick way to get into voicemail from home without being at the Ooma or having an Oooma handset. It's only a matter of a little software.
Maybe they are trying to force everyone to buy an Ooma handset (which from the reviews I've read is underwhelming).
Switching from Qwest, the worst of the old RBOCs, we had a stutter tone, and could easily get into voicemail by touching three keys: *98. Our Ooma is in the basement, where it is not readily accessible.

Program a quick dial key on your non-Ooma phone to dial your own number.

These are all workarounds that are unnecessary with most competitive voip & other services. Needing line of sight to the device or handsets w LED's is inadequate if you distribute Ooma to traditional house-phones.

At minimum - it's an oversight, but realistically an inconvenience that should be addressed if possible.

Stutter dial tone is already used to indicate that privacy (do not disturb) mode is enabled.

So what? The point is that a pretty standard feature generally accepted by consumers & competitors has been overlooked or left out by design. My opinion is that's a miss.

Perhaps Ooma can add multiple audible tones & assign them to specific features (i.e. vmail, privacy, etc.) Similar to assigning custom ringtones to multiple lines.

Unless Ooma support chimes in, I think we've sufficiently beat this one to death.