Just a warning on call recorders
I had a hot and steamy Saturday night in the ER with a baby (same as last time, but this time on Saturday,) we’re still in recovery but I learned some valuable lessons about phones, more tests you should do after installing any application.
To the point I learned that if you ever install a call recorder on your phone you need to verify with some press-a-number phone service that your DTMF isn’t screwed up.
Imagine my surprise when attempting to dial 9 after calling my pediatrician’s office resulted in the night emergency on call physician not being contacted because there was no 9 tone coming through the other side, or at least a diminished sound was going through.
I used my wife’s phone which worked and later figured out that the call recorder had screwed my phone up.
I’d installed the call recorder mostly to do an app review and used it for a couple of calls where I was getting a lot of detailed instruction (they knew I was recording.) But man, not being able to press 9 and my wife at home with the sleeping toddler left me unable to contact the emergency pediatrician, standing outside a closed office they’d sent me to with a hacking and wheezing little one.
We just drove to the ER from there, and fun.
Never did I ever suspect that something that had been living quietly on my phone for months would mess up something as simple as a tone, nor did I think that we’d advanced so little in automated voice menu systems that saying “associate,” “operator,” or “emergency” or just staying on the line wouldn’t work on a managed phone system.
Ah well, live and learn.
