Safe Call Forwarding Question

[arkhogfan]

Just went through a 4 day power outage and for part of the time Universe was down because there was no power to the Switch Box, but then AT&T put a generator on it so the box had power, but I had nothing at the house and my battery backup was dead.  I had Safe Call Forwarding on but after the Swtich Box got power back any calls to my home number got a busy signal instead of ringing to my cell phone, which is what I had programmed. Does AT&T's definiton of "No Service" mean they are down as opposed to "No Service" at my number?  I had always assumed that if the modem went down that all calls would go to my alternate number because of "Safe Call Forwarding".  Am I wrong?

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

arkhogfan -
It does specifically say both cases are covered - Forward incoming calls to voice mail or another number during a power outage (if battery backup is exhausted) or network outage

from - https://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401020#fbid=PL3MzZ8kb53

[arkhogfan]

Interesting, but that isn't what I experienced.  I was at my office on Friday and had my battery backup with me charging and when I called home to see if I had power I got a busy signal. 

[BillTX]

My experience is that Safe Call Forwarding never works as it should and the only way to accomplish call forwarding when U-verse goes down is to call Tech Support and request my numbers be forwarded to my cell phone.  If you get a knowledgeable CSR, he or she will set up the forwarding from their end in a minute or two.  Alas, not all CSRs are knowledgeable and you may have to give up on one who isn't and keep calling back until you get one who is.

[spiderman0112]

Hi there!

You actually have the power to go about that feature.

Go to www.att.com/olam and log in using your att user id and password

once on that page, click on the Voice icon (phone icon) and go down to "manage features" on the left side.

After you click on it, it will direct you to features of your uverse voice and from there you have the option to turn on or off your safe forwarding feature and the rest of the available settings for you

cheers!

[BillTX]

Well, yes. that's how it should work and that's how I have the option set up.  The problem is that "safe call forwarding" just doesn't "kick in" when the service goes down.  Recently, a car took out the cross-box beside the VRAD in my neighborhood.  And I do mean took it out---it looked like it had been run over by a train. The AT&T line techs made temporary repairs in a matter of hours but a permanent repair took some three weeks with intermittent loss of service as the boxes were re-cabled.  During none of those outages did safe call forwarding work.  I quickly learned to call Support and ask the agents to set up the forwarding to my cell phone---which I then had to manually cancel (*73#) when the service came back up.

Perhaps it just doesn't work for me because we're in an older exchange???

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

BillTX - To pursue the defective safe call forwarding send a pm to attcustomer care with your acct info using this link - http://forums.att.com/t5/notes/privatenotespage/tab/compose/note-to-user-id/192773

When you call a CSR to have call forwarding set, you are using standard call forwarding (72) & you cancel it by calling from your home phone when it is restored??

You can set it up by any telephone (avoid calling CSR) when you know there is an outage.

Call your home phone & enter * to trigger the admin process, navigate the menu to enter the *72#.

Maybe you cannot get to the admin menu because of the busy ( I do not understand why it does not go to voicemail so you can hit *.)

There are area master numbers for you to call. On answering you enter your telno & pin & follow the menu.

I cannot find a list of these master numbers for U-verse voice. I got mine from the installer & it is for unified messaging. Maybe ask when you contact customercare.

edit - Maaybe you can find tour master number here - https://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401110#fbid=3toKSZmnczk

[BillTX]

Morning, ACE.

The call forwarding which CSR sets up when we have an outage is indeed the same "variable call forwarding" which I can trigger by *72 and I can then disable it by *73.  Not every CSR can figure out how to do that, but most can in a jiffy.

When we have an outage, I cannot get past the busy from another phone.  (We do not have unified messaging because our cell service is through (GASP!) Verizon.)

If we are at home in the event of an outage, we will notice it right away bcause the line lights on all the phones turn a constant red and then I know to call CSR to forward our calls.  Of course, it we're not at home our callers just get the busy.  As retirees who still maintain small consulting practices, we're home a great deal of the time.  Except for the collision with the equipment boxes, we have had very few outages lasting more than a few minutes during the three+ years we've had Uverse so the non-working forwarding during outages hasn't been a big problem, certainly not big enough to get deeply involved with Support to resolve the issue.

I'll look for the master number as soon as I send this.

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

BillTX -
The first explanation is a little vague. There is a more detailed explanation at the end of the last topic -

To find your access number:
Log in to myAT&T. Don't have a myAT&T account? Create an AT&T Access ID and register your account online.
Select Manage Features at the bottom of the page under the My Phone Features section.
In the Call Forwarding section, look for the 10-digit phone number following Forward to Voice Mail. That 10-digit phone number is your access number.
Keep in mind that when dialing into voicemail remotely, you may incur additional access charges for non-local calls, hotel services charges, or cellular charges.
Important Note

If you cannot find itt when you are in your account then call CSR & ask them to look it up or step you through it to exactly where it is.

[BillTX]

ACE,

It didn't register on me what you meant by the Access ID.  I do know that number but it doesn't help because, when we have an outage, dialing our numbers produces nothing but busy signals to the caller.  They never get to the voice mail even though I have Busy Call Forwarding set up in Phone Options.  I can use the Access number to check voice mail, but there won't be any messages because our callers can't get beyond the busy signal to reach voice mail.

When we're out of service, we're out of service---unless I call in and ask for forwarding to be implemented by the CSR.  We have 40 year old underground service and the cables in the street are mostly the originals so perhaps they don't deliver the proper signal to the central office equipment???

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

BillTX - OOOps - sorry about that. I thought all settings were available remotely via the web, calling home phone or the master number.

[BillTX]

Ace,

Apparently "remote call forwarding" is available only with POTS, not Uverse.  I never used that one anyway, but the POTS feature I really miss is "busy redial" which Uverse doesn't have for some reason.