Pac Bell’s Voice Mail Service Suffers a Major Disruption

Pacific Bell’s Message Center voice mail system suffered its worst-ever disruption Wednesday, erasing messages and leaving tens of thousands of residential subscribers without service for about six hours.

The problems, which were still being resolved Thursday, outraged some customers who complained that they had signed up for the $5.95-a-month service precisely because Pacific Bell had touted it as safer and more reliable than traditional answering machines.

“I got rid of my $150 answering machine because this sounded like a fail-safe system,” said Brad Altman, who publishes an investment newsletter in Los Angeles. “Now, I am seriously considering going back to my answering machine.”

Keith Epstein, executive director of Pacific Bell’s information services division, said the problems were related to the computer that handles the voice mail service and did not involve the phone company’s transmission network. He said messages stored on the system between June 23 and June 27 were erased and cannot be recovered. All other messages, he said, can be retrieved and should be available to subscribers within the next two days.

Epstein said subscribers are being given a month’s free service because of the disruption, which he described as the most extensive to strike the phone company’s Message Center in the nearly two years it has been offered in California.

The system has been hit by other problems, including temporary outages.