GE 29875GE1 Phone Answering Machine White 29875GE1

We had one just like it that lasted 8 years: 2008 - 2016. A family friend bought it brand new for us in 2008, and it finally kicked the bucket in November 2016. It's simple, fun to make our own custom, funny answering machine greetings on it, and I love how you can adjust the volume on it from loud to quiet in 8 different volume levels so as to not wake anyone up or allow everyone to hear it from afar. There are some features we never use, such as time and date, so I don't know how easy that is to set up, but the rest is relatively easy to figure out. We have a mentally disabled family member who once had a bad habit of calling all the time until we picked up, so I think the most messages we ever had on it was something like 82 messages. (Yikes!) Our average number of messages were less than 20 a day, though. As far as what parts wore out first: The "Power 5vac~" cord that has a finger-shaped, ribbed plug-in in the back of it. Not only is the cord thin, but the bending ribs wore out (Think: bending a thin wire or the lid of a food can back and forth until it becomes brittle and breaks), so I wrapped tape around it to make it last longer. I think it lasted 5 months taped like that until we had so much trouble keeping it working, we absolutely needed to find a new answering machine. At first, it was a daunting and difficult task looking for a new one, because most of what we found either had bad ratings on Amazon, or it was part of a cordless, battery-powered 2 - 5 phone set. We wanted to keep using the corded kind because the phones you have to charge? What happens if your power goes out? There's no way to use your phone once those batteries die. And sure, we have cell phones, but if for some reason we lose power for several days, it won't be pretty if our cell phones die, too. Usually when you lose power, you don't lose the landlines. They're separate. So we like keeping the old phone and answering machine system. Just when I began to lose hope and was looking for completely different things, Amazon had this answering machine listed in its suggestions. I freaked. It was the exact same kind as our old one! Why hadn't this shown up when I searched far and wide for it? Not sure, but I found a good seller and bought it lightly used. It works perfectly, and I couldn't be happier. This is the best, longest-lasting answering machine we've ever had. I highly recommend it.

This answering machine was a total waste of my money. It was simple to set up, but the speaker in the machine was defective and the voice messages were garbled and very hard to understand.The instruction manual was also missing.

Tough to find answering machines in this day and age. This re[placed my old one from 2000

The product works but the volume is very low making messages hard to hear.

The voice recording that we put on this will not be clear. LOTS AND LOTS OF STATIC.

This machine is the successor (an updated model) to its predecessor, which had lasted at least 30 years, but finally no longer recorded the incoming messages -- they just became a buzzing noise. This new machine works well, but setting it up was slightly challenging. Once a function (date, time of day or number of rings before the "outgoing" message activates) was set, the machine wouldn't permit it to be changed and re-set. Now that the machine has been in use for a month, I will try again to re-set some of the functions to the correct or desired settings. The feature I value most is the ability to change and re-record the "outgoing" message easily. The feature I find least helpful is the window indicating the number of messages waiting, which can't be seen clearly from a distance. The old machine had a large red light that blinked when a message was waiting, and this was much more effective. But the recorded messages, both "outgoing" and "incoming" are quite clear, so all in all this machine does its job and is simple to use (other than perhaps the initial setting up of the functions).

I'm so grateful to continue to use a perfectly awesome simple technology! I'm not a big phone user, so my landline is all I need for catching calls, and this machine provides me with an immediate visual when I come home. I've used this system for over a decade and feared I wouldn't be able to replace it once it recently started acting up. While I have a cell phone, it is not my primary number. My home phone is the number I use, so being able to acquire a replacement answering machine that may be considered "old school" is nonetheless a real help and timesaver for me. Thank you!

Same problem as other buyer trying to erase a message might take 4 to five attempts. Funny the walmart reciept was for 14.88 and I paid 9.00 took me thirty minutes to erase the previous owners messages including ones that was indicative of a crap product. Next time I will pay six bucks and not get a phone with coffee dumpted all over it.