I have a status report. I still need to do some longer-term testing and observation, but I'm making progress. I'm home now, and upon returning, I first noticed several calls show up on my old-style caller-id boxes. These were calls which were going straight to voice mail, but evidently, they must have rung in the house at least one full ring cycle to register. Then a couple of answering machine messages were just a beep, as if a hangup.
This is starting to appear like the GV voice mail is in a time race with the ans. machine to see who can answer the fastest. It could be a very close race. But this has not been an issue before and the answering machine has not been changed to wait more rings. Sometimes they might grab it at the same instant or within a fraction of a second. Remember, the ans. machine ALWAYS picked up when calling the CC number directly or calling the Obi number. Neither of these have a voice mail or other call interception that I'm aware of... but GV does.
Then I had a friend call in twice. It rang both times. The first time, I picked up and we talked. The second time, I waited for the machine or GV VM to pick up. It was the machine. So now I can't even watch it malfunction while I'm present
. Ironically, the ans. machine is supposed to work primarily when I'm NOT here...
One thought which may or may not mean anything- Today is Aug. 1. Could there be a feature change or any kind of system update which might cause unusual behaviors?
I have not yet done a power cycle since I'm still trying to notice what happens, and the phone appears to be ringing when it's supposed to, so no critical malfunctions that I can detect.