Troubleshooting Service Difficulties and Faults

The majority of reported 1300/1800 number service difficulties or faults are usually caused by our customers' other fixed landline, VoIP (IP telephony), cable telephony or mobile phone services and their configurations.

PLEASE NOTE: Our Customer Support Team members are very happy to promptly investigate and resolve service difficulties genuinely related to the services that we provide.

However, if you report a service difficulty fault that is:
1. determined to be unrelated to a service provided by Alltel
2. caused by (or incompatability with) another service provider's service/network, you may incur fees [$45 per 15 minutes (or part therof) of the time taken for support staff and network technicians to investigate and identify the fault (minimum charge 30 minutes].

Have you recently changed:

• your answerpoint phone number/s?
• the carrier of your answerpoint phone number/s?
• from PSTN answerpoint number/s to VoIP (IP telephony) or cable telephony answerpoint number/s?
• redirection settings for internal phone numbers, mobile numbers?
• settings/timings (including call waiting/messagebank) for your phone system, landlines or mobile phones ?

If so, these factors are the most likely cause of a new problem.

Before you report a suspected fault, please check your associated internal phone services to ensure they are functioning and configured correctly and that they take into account the timing/configuration of your 1300 or 1800 number/s.

If you've changed the timings or redirection settings for your landline phone numbers, mobile numbers, messagebank or voicemail you will need to reconfigure them so they don't conflict with the configuration settings or timings for your 1300 or 1800 number/s.

If you've changed your answerpoint number/s, please notify us immediately so we can reconfigure your services.

VoIP Compatibility: Please Note that some VoIP hardware, equipment, software or services may not be compatible with your inbound 1300, 1800, 13 number/s. Technical difficulties and faults often increase when inbound numbers are routed to VoIP DID numbers rather than PSTN numbers. Alltel does not accept any responsibility for faults that occur between inbound numbers and VoIP services.

Please test the following trouble shooting suggestions for the most common Service Difficulty and Faults reported.

1300/1800 Numbers

You've just relocated and now your 1800/1300 number doesn't work any more.

Solution:You need to inform us if you:

1. relocate and/or
2. change/cancel your destination phone number,

so we can configure your 1300/1800 number to route (redirect) to your new destination number.

Your 1300/1800 number is routed to a single answerpoint (eg. your office, mobile, live answering service indial number) [simple configuration].

Problem: Callers receive an engaged signal or a recorded 'system' message.

Check: Call the answerpoint number directly to see if the fault is on that number.

Your 1300/1800 number is routed to multiple answerpoints [complex configuration]

eg. First route is to your office number (first answerpoint). If no answer after 10-15 seconds or line is busy, caller is routed to a second number (second answerpoint - eg. another office, live answering, mobile)

PLEASE NOTE: The setting of "no answer after 10-15 seconds" carries through to each answerpoint.

Problem: Callers receive an engaged signal or a recorded 'system' message.

Check: Call the first answerpoint number directly to see if the fault is on that number.

Problem: The number rings for 10-15 seconds and then callers receive an engaged signal or a recorded 'system' message.

Check: Call the second answerpoint number directly to see if the fault is on that number.

Problem: The first answerpoint rings for 10-15 seconds and then the second answerpoint rings for 10-15 seconds. Then the caller receives a recorded 'system' message saying to call again later.

Reason/Solution: You are not answering the call quickly enough on the second answerpoint number. If a 1300 or 1800 number is set to redirect to a second number after 10-15 seconds and that answerpoint number does not answer, the 1300/1800 number does not know what to do, so it plays a system message asking the caller to try again later.

Problem: Your answering machine/home messages 101 intercepts the call before it redirects to live answering

Reason/Solution: There is a conflict in the timing of when your answering machine/messagebank intercepts the call compared with the timing of when the call redirects to live answering.

Either

1. deactivate your answering machine/messagebank/ home messages 101
2. extend the timing of your answering machine/messagebank/ home messages 101

Problem: The first answerpoint is your mobile. It rings and before it is answered or redirects to the second answerpoint, the call goes to your mobile messagebank.

Reason/Solution: If your 1300 or 1800 number is set to redirect to a second number after 10-15 seconds, you need to extend the timing on your mobile so that your mobile messagebank doesn't intercept the call until more than 10-15 seconds.

Problem: Your second answerpoint is a mobile and the calls always seem to go to mobile messagebank.

Reason/Solution: It can sometimes take approx 5 seconds for the mobile to be found on its cellphone network and to start ringing, leaving you with only 5-10 seconds to answer. You may need to extend the timing of when your calls go to your mobile messagebank.

Live Answering

Test the Live Answering service (indial) number that we have provided to you by calling it directly.

• You have Live Answering only (no 1300/1800 number) and you redirect your home/office number to the Live Answering service (indial) number we have provided to you.

Problem: Your calls are not being routed to live answering

Check: Ensure that all your numbers that are redirected to Live Answering are configured correctly and are redirecting to the correct live answering service (indial) number that we have provided to you. (see User Guides for redirection info sheet)

Problem: Your messagebank/home messages 101 intercepts the call before it redirects to live answering

Reason/Solution: There is a conflict in the timing of when your messagebank intercepts the call compared with the timing of when the call redirect to live answering.

Either

1. deactivate your messagebank/ home messages 101
2. extend the timing of your messagebank/ home messages 101

1300/1800 Number AND Live Answering

Please see all of above.