Alexa skill stopped working for voice mail

[adam2022]

Hey all. I got my 78 year old blind mom an Ooma Telo and Amazon echo so she can easily make phone calls without dialing the phone. It works great for making calls. And it initially worked to check her messages. However, a few months ago it stopped working to check messages. When saying Alexa ask ooma to check messages, she says she has trouble connecting to the Ooma account. I've tried removing and re-adding the skill to her Alexa app but it still won't work. I had contacted someone at Ooma through chat and they claimed they knew about it and are working on the problem.. but I am skeptical about that. There are complaints about this on the reviews of the skill itself, but I am worried that there isn't a single post on the forums about it. Is anyone else having this particular problem?

[larryk]

You are not alone...Same problem!

[adam2022]

That's it? Only one other person? My mother has been unable to check her voice mail since February 2022.

[adam2022]

Just want to clarify;

When alexa is asked to check voice mail on Ooma, she is able to say how many message there are. She also asks if you want to play them. When you confirm, she says she has difficulty connecting to the account and then marks the first message as read. So if you ask her again if there are any messages she reports 1 less message. So as an example, if you have 5 voice mails, and you ask her to play them, she doesn't, and marks one as read. Next time you ask her, she says there are 4. She will keep doing this until there are none. So she is able to connect to the account in order to retrieve the number of unread messages, but she won't play them.

[Robek]

There are also lower-tech alternatives for voicemail accessibility, such as a braille telephone.

[adam2022]

How is this even an acceptable response? My mother doesn't know how to read braille. She is 78 years old. You know the saying can't teach an old dog new tricks? It's now July 2023 and Ooma has shown zero interest in looking into or fixing this problem.

[larryk]

This has not worked in so long that I forgot that it ever existed, maybe that is what they want...

[Robek]

This is primarily a user forum. For an official response, contact Ooma directly, by phone or by email, (not by chat), and open up a formal incident. It's been over a year now. Has anyone done that yet? Ooma could either fix the issue, or stop advertising a feature that no longer works, or else withdraw the app.

In the meantime, there are also non-braille alternatives for voicemail accessibility.