Okay, this is a bit frustrating - Shaw plays voicemail messages back in reverse chronological order, with no way to change it.

Scenario - someone calls and leaves two messages (simulated messages below)

Message 1 - "Hey Gord, you can come over to our place around 8:00 if you want to hang out and watch the game."

Message 2 - "Oh yeah, can you pick up some beer?"

When I play it back I hear the messages in this order:

Message 1 - "Oh yeah, can you pick up some beer?"

Beer? Beer for what?

Message 2 - "Hey Gord, you can come over to our place around 8:00 if you want to hang out and watch the game."

Ohhh, okay, I'm invited over to watch the game at 8:00, and I should bring beer. Okay.

The order in which Shaw plays the messages back makes absolutely no sense. Try it out yourself by calling and leaving two messages, then playing them back.

I know we have some Shaw employees that post here - is this something you can bring up with operations, or someone that can have it changed? I can't think of any valid reason why people would want the messages playing back in reverse order. Can you imagine how confusing that would be if you were gone on vacation for a week or two?

Gord

It makes perfect sense in normal situations. The oldest messages are heard last. It is a standard.
You just need new friends that get it right the first time.:)

I tend to agree with Gord. FWIW, Comedian Mail (Asterisk's voicemail application) plays messages in the order that they were left.

Really dennism3? Standard for what system? Our voicemail systems at work (we had 2 systems while I was there) would always play it in the order it was left, the Telus voicemail system does the same thing, as does Bell. The only system I've encountered that plays the most recent message first is the Shaw one, so I don't think you can call this "standard."

It's a bit like saying it would be okay for a store to service the most recent person that walked through the door instead of the people that have been waiting the longest ;)

Gord

I'm with Gord, first voicemail (i.e oldest) should play back first.

My only question to Gord is how come I wasn't invited over for a beer?

What? You didn't get my message? Darn voicemail systems!

Gord

I never knew I had this problem till I didn't get the message at all... Geeze, it seems more serious than I had initially thought. I will contact Shaw immediately!!!:):):)

Here's two more curious issues that made me think, "Why the heck did they do it this way?"

If you have an overline setup, that is, multiple lines used with the same phone number, Shaw will assign a new phone number to each line. When you call out with one of these lines, the new phone number appears on the recipient's Caller ID, not the primary one, causing my customers who are used to my old phone number to be royally confused. (It doesn't take much to confuse them.) With Telus, outgoing Caller ID displayed the primary number only.

If you use Call Forward Busy, it disables your voicemail. If nobody picks up the phone when it rings, it'll just keep ringing forever (unless you've activated Call Forward No Answer.) We don't have voicemail on this line, so this wasn't a problem for us. But I cannot come up with a logical reason why they would set up this feature as such.

Yeah, as happy as I am with Shaw Digital Phone, it's VERY obvious that it's a cable company providing a telecom service based on some of the weird issues with the service. They just don't have the know-how or experience to deliver a rock-solid product.

Gord