Stop Phone Calls from Redirecting to Voicemail Directly

If you set your phone calls to jump directly into voicemail, you wouldn’t have an issue when they eventually take that route. However, it could be frustrating if you didn’t intentionally turn on the feature- and even more annoying when you don’t know how to flip the switch.

If you’ve been looking for how to stop your important phone calls from going into your voicemail, then you should read this article. Below, we would be exploring why it does so, and how to stop future occurrences.

Why are my phone calls going straight to voicemail?

Curious about why this is even happening? Here are the possible reasons:

It might be because you have no service

Most smartphone users go through this experience mostly because they have little or no service connections. This happens majorly when your phone is on ‘Airplane mode’ or when you are physically too far from an active cell phone tower.

If it is due to the first reason, you probably activated the feature accidentally.

Do not disturb mode  

Asides the ‘Airplane mode’ feature, another mode that sends your phone calls directly to voicemail is the ‘Do not disturb mode’. Again, you could have activated this mode unintentionally.

You shouldn’t mistake ‘Do not disturb mode’ for ‘Silent mode’. While Silent mode would still allow your phone to vibrate when you have a call, ‘Do not disturb mode’ stops all incoming texts and directs all calls to voicemail.

So yeah! Your ‘Do not disturb mode’ might just be the culprit.

But, how do you know if it is turned on?

If you use an android, swipe the notification bar down to view the control center. If you do not see it amongst the top icons, swipe down once more to see more icons. You would find it among those.

To check if your ‘Do not disturb’ mode is activated on an iPhone, you would see a crescent moon in the status bar.

Now you know if it is on or off, how do you turn it off if you had accidentally activated it?

On an android phone, you could turn it off via the control center just above the notification bar. If you can’t find it there, then head over to your ‘Settings’ app. When there, search for ‘Do not disturb’. Once you find it, switch it off.

For iPhones, there are two ways through which you could turn the feature off. First off, you could go to settings to turn do not disturb on/off. In exchange for that route, you could open your control center, touch and hold the crescent moon icon, and adjust your ‘Do not disturb feature’.

Do not disturb while driving

For iPhone users, the IOS 11 brought with it a new feature called Do Not Disturb While Driving. This feature automatically turns on whenever your iPhone detects you are riding a car.

To turn off this feature, follow these steps:

– Add Do Not Disturb While Driving to the Control Centre by going to Settings> Control Centre > Customize Controls.

– Then, hit the green sign towards the left of Do Not Disturb While Driving

– From the bottom of the screen, swipe up to view the control center. Then, turn tap the Do Not Disturb While Driving icon to turn it off.

The Volume Control

Check your phone’s volume; it might just be the culprit! Your calls may be redirected to voicemail when your phone’s volume is too low.

How do you fix it?

One of the following tips might help you overcome this hurdle:

Check for carrier settings

With regards to receiving and sending calls, your carrier settings are of utmost importance. This is because it allows you to successfully connect to your carrier’s wireless network. If they are out of date, your phone won’t connect to your carrier. If your phone doesn’t do so, then your calls would be automatically redirected to voicemail.

Let’s fix that first.

–  Open your settings app.

–  Tap About.

–  Search for a notification indicating an update is needed.

–  If it is a Carrier Settings Update, tap update.

The update should begin automatically. Once it has been completed, have someone test-call your phone to confirm if the issue has been fixed.

Announce calls

In the recent IOS version, a new feature has- Announce Calls- allows you to be notified through the phone’s speaker irrespective of whether you are using a headphone.

To turn it on, head to settings > Phone >Announce Calls. Give it a shot by tapping ‘Always’.

Contact your carrier

If this issue persists, you might need to contact your provider. Maybe- just maybe- it might be a tower update from their end. If it is not, they should be able to show you other viable steps to take in case of future occurrences.

Turn off silence unknown callers

Silence Unknown Callers is a feature that automatically sends unknown numbers to voicemail.

To turn this off go to settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers. Turn it off.

In Conclusion

Do you think it is time to change carriers?

If you are fed up with the constant challenges posed by your current carrier, you might just consider making a switch! Still, if you are not able to solve your problem and your phone is too old then you may want to sell your old phone and get a new one!!