I took my phone to the Sprint Store where I purchased it. A gentleman working there identified a problem. "Your 'domestic calling' setting was turned off," he said, "So your phone is searching for international cell towers."
"There aren't any international towers around here," I said. To which he replied, "Of course not. That is why you are not receiving incoming calls."
He turned on the domestic calling setting and called my phone. Naturally it did not ring. So he sent me to another cell phone store staffed by a technician who might possibly be able to sort out the problem.
When I arrived there, a young gentleman said he would look at it but that it would take him about an hour. So I went back to the shop and returned later.
When I returned, he indicated that he was able to get it working again. I asked him if he had to do a factory re-set on the phone. He said no, that was not necessary. Turns out it was just one of those weird, one-of-a-kind of things. My phone could locate the network and I could call out for some reason, but some networking code was not set right so the network could not find my phone in order to transfer calls to it.
"You should have been here when I fixed it," he said. "It was dinging like crazy for about a half hour while it was downloading all the voice-mail messages that were backed up."
So my phone is back in business. Which is both good and bad. Its nice to have it working again, but I will be spending the week-end wading through and answering voice-mail messages.
All's well that ends well, I guess...although it sure was nice and peaceful this past week.
- Jim
