messages from beyond
My father passed away on Monday.

I was away at a festival all weekend, he'd left me a voicemail, which I only found out about yesterday. I listened to it, and he was his usual self, despite the illness. I didn't want to lose this, so I called Orange, and the lovely chap on their end talked me through how to record the voicemail from my phone, and then called me back later on to make sure everything had worked out.

He also left some on my mothers phone.

Her phone isn't as high spec as mine, and doesn't have call recording. I rang tesco mobile, and the tech support spent some time trying to work out whether her phone would do it, whether my old phone might, and which phones should do it. In the end he called someone else to ask whether they could put a block on them being deleted, and then put me through to a young lady who promised that she would try to find a way to record them for us.

They phoned back today, they're setting up recording equipment at their end, they're going record them and send us a minidisc with the two mails on.

Now whenever my mum and I start to miss him too much, we can listen to his voice and just think about him.

(If anyone knows of a fairly cheap Minidisc player with pc connections and all that stuff that would be awesomes.)

Edit: Miss Mookroolz has kindly offered us a minidisc player. Thank you all for your assistance and kind wishes. You're all lovely.
(stapleface, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 10:14, 11 replies)

Might be wrong...
It might just be my pc, but most can play mini disks anyway, which presumably you could burn and then put on your mp3 player.

Secondly, deepest sympathies on your loss. Very nice to know that sometimes, just sometimes the call centre robots have a heart. For once kudos to them.
(MissFlee tried again on, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 10:20, closed)

What misflee said
Just shows they are still human.

Condolences.
(Neil_E_There didn't the Aussies used to be good at cricket?, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 10:29, closed)

I'm really sorry to hear you lost your Dad.
I'm glad the Orange and Tesco support people were able to help you too, it'll be nice to have his voice when you're missing him.
(Poppet some assembly required., Wed 5 Aug 2009, 10:29, closed)

sorry
Sorry to hear this. But good to hear both companies were decent about your request. You can get cheap minidisc players on ebay, player only ones are cheapest, just put a standard minijack from the headphone socket in the player to your pc soundcard line in. Fire up Audacity (free awesome sound thingy)and set source to "line in" - play the disc and hit record on audacity. To save as mp3 don't forget to download lame encoder and store it in the audacity folder on your pc, the first time you try to save as mp3 audacity will ask you where this is - just point to it and all will be well.

Audacity: audacity.sourceforge.net/

lame mp3 encoder: lame.buanzo.com.ar/

any probs with setup just message me

bathtub
(bathtub has renounced CS3 for paint.net, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 11:01, closed)

Damn,
Condolences on your loss mate. Big up to the call center bods though.
(Obi wanker nobi Its not a bug, its an unexpected feature, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 11:08, closed)

Update:
They've recorded them. They're sending them out in the post, and we should have them soon.

They tried everything they could think of to get access to her voicemail, got in touch with with 02, and even transferred his remaining credit over (£25!) to hers. The girl even said when we got them to call her and let her know, so that there were no problems. It's almost like this girl and the others helping her made it their quest to fix this for us.

Thank you all so much for the kind messages of sympathy and offers of help. I'd like to especially thank mookroolz who's just offered me a minidisc player. She's nice. In fact, you all are. Argh, starting to well up again!
(stapleface, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 12:31, closed)

Condolences
I've never even considered that people end up with things like this.

Actual Minidiscs are so dead now that I doubt they'd be sending them out; rather a miniature CD which any non slot-loading CD drive will take.
( Rookie You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 14:30, closed)

She said
That it was all they had there. It's ok though, so long as there is something.

Top tip to everyone: If you lose someone, try ringing their network, it's amazing what they will try to do for you. You might have to pass a few security things but they'll understand if you can't get everything right.
(stapleface, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 14:44, closed)

To get access to her voicemail...
.... couldn't you have just put her Simcard into your phone, dialled the voicemail number and recorded them in teh same way you did yours?

Nice to hear the phone people do have a heart, good for them
(Scary, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 22:24, closed)

Considered
I thought of that, but different networks. Don't know anyone who is on TescMob who would have a good phone for it. I mean I could have tried an O2 phone but just couldn't think properly. Then they put me through to the girl who tried for me.
(stapleface, Thu 6 Aug 2009, 1:04, closed)

minidisc
i got a Sharp player that came complete with cables and software, cost £60 about 8 years ago
(amazinglasercow now sporting terawatt mining lasers, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 13:35, closed)