Gotcha of the Day: Shira is calling but my phone isn't ringing

Yesterday Shira tried calling me on my Galaxy S3 a number of times and, every time she did the calls were sent to voice mail. No ringing and no sign of a missed call on my Android device. I figured it was a networking fluke. Then she tried it again today, and there were still kicked to voice mail. Then I tried from our home phone, same problem. Uh-oh, time to call T-mobile tech support and see what they suggest.

I had visions of them having me do a full reset or something to fix this issue. Instead, the technician walked me through 3 different steps to fix the issue:

1. Check to see if Blocking Mode is enabled. Blocking Mode allows you to silence your phone for part or all of the day. I've experimented with this in the past, but prefer to whip up some Tasker recipes instead. Strike 1.

2. Turn off call forwarding. If call forwarding were on, then someone else's phone would be getting all my calls. Gulp. This is turned off by "calling" ##004#. That almost certainly wasn't the problem, but I did it anyway. Strike 2.

3. Check the phone's Auto Rejection list. These are phone numbers that go right to voice mail. I didn't even realize I had this feature. You go to: Phone App > Settings > Call Rejection > Auto reject list. Sure enough, Shira's number and our home number were on this list. Crack—Home Run!.

Apparently, in the contact manager, I had somehow managed to select the "Add to reject list" menu item on Shira's contact (some sort of Freudian slip?). Our home number is associated with her, so it just so happened to include all the numbers I was testing with.

Every once in a while I call T-mobile support and they are really, truly helpful. This was one of those times. Well done T-mobile.