GE 5.8GHz Cordless Phone with Digital Answering System (25893GE3)

Comment: Sound familiar? If you call Tech Support (good old Thomsom, Inc. gotta love 'um) they will tell you to check the battery. So you will probably go out and spend $12 - $20 on a new battery. If you find out this doesn't work, you'll look in the manual, because who has time to to call Tech Support back, right? So yeah, you look in the manual, and it tells you to "start over" which means unplugging the piece of you-know-what from the wall, removing the battery from the phone and praying for 15 minutes, afterwhich you have to carefully (carefully now) replace everything in the exact reverse order. So you do all that, first carefully replacing the battery then replugging. (And if you are really astute, you may be asking yourself, but where does the phone line fall into this order, am I supposed to have unplugged that at some point too?) So this may not work either. Seriously. So you go out to price new phones and don't feel like spending another $50, especially to go through this whole thing again. So like a fool, you will call Tech Support again. This time Tech support will ask if you did "start over" correctly - and yes, DID you unplug the phone cord? They will tell you to do it over (unplugging the phone cord this time) and if this doesn't work to send it back if it's still under warranty. Which I guarantee it will be, because the phone is a piece of you know what. So what won't Tech Support tell you? If it's not the battery, and if the phone doesn't require "start over" then the handset ain't communicating with the base. As in "copy Dallas?" No Dallas, we have a problem. So like then after all that grief you will probably notice that there's some instructions in your manual for Registration, De-Registration, and Global De-registration. If your manual came in English and you speak English. Mine came in Spanish. My Spanish isn't so good. You are probably asking, what are these for, if you can read your manual. Ever seen Karate Kid? Mr. Miyagi says, "Funny you should ask." So anyway, this worked for me and before you waste 4 hours doing what I've already done above, try playing with these. What worked for me anyway, was first doing Global-Deregistration. Then I did Deregistration. Then I did Registration. There's a catch. Why not, right? So like the buttons on the phone are probably not set up the way the manual says they are. And the viewscreen on the phone may not actually tell you that you actually did Global-Deregistration or Deregistration. Mine didn't anyway. Mine did tell me when it was Registering - or Re-registering, as it was in this case to be exact. I swear these things are possessed. At any rate, this all worked for me and I hope anyone else with this problem can benefit from this by saving time or their hard earned money.

Comment: i have had this phone since march 2004. the answer machine cuts off before the people can leave a phone # and short message and when i have an apartment for rent and pay about $135.00 for the ad in the newspaper and get home to 25 or so messages. most of the phone #s are cut off because the people leave their phone # last after their short message. Also i just bought a new battery at thanksgiving and it is almost dead now and the phone is not used that much for talking.
GE GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND PUT SOME QUALITY BACK IN YOUR PRODUCTS

Comment: Thought this phone looked very good. Was wrong. I've had it for about a year. Just bought a new phone from Panasonic.

The things I dont like about the GE are:

--Every now and then, seemingly at random, it says "Press review key to review setup instructions". Then it looses the date and greeting message. Setting the clock over and over is a pain.

--It gets very warm when charging.

--Here's the biggest one. The buttons are not working more and more as time goes by. The top 3 barely work at all. Not good if you were in an emergency. The old phone company phones worked forever. Only less than a year for this one.

Comment: I thought I had finally found the phone that solved all of my problems - it worked well, had great range, and was reliable. Now it's a year later and I'm fine as long as I don't want to dial anybody because the buttons no longer work. I can't recommend it for the long haul.

Comment: We replaced a 2.4 ghz uniden when we installed a wireless network because of static and noise on the line....The Ge phone works great no problems so far. very clear reception...