Do Not Disturb Phone Does Not Ring
UPDATE: The “Do Not Disturb” feature for Magic Jack has been discontinued by the company.
I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people saying that the phone they are using with Magic Jack does not ring when a call is coming in. The first thing you should check is the menu on your softphone screen to make sure that “Do Not Disturb” has not been enabled. To do this click on the Menu button on your softphone screen. A drop-down menu will then appear, with different options . Look to see if there is a check mark by the Do Not Disturb option. If there is, then click it again to make the check mark go away and then your phone should ring.
If you don’t have Do Not Disturb enabled and have tried the above, then try a different phone to see if perhaps the phone you were using won’t ring with Magic Jack. Any regular landline phone should work, you don’t need to buy a special phone. Also, make sure that your phone cord that is plugged into your MJ device is not more than six feet long.
Also, you do need to disconnect your magicJack once a month. All you have to do is unplug the device, reboot your computer and then plug the device back into the USB port on your computer. This keeps your magic jack working well. The other day I had a problem with my MJ turning off and on. It did this several times before I realized that I hadn’t done my “maintenance” by unplugging the device. I did that, and it’s been working perfectly ever since. I’m going to put a reminder for the first of every month to do this so I don’t have to stop and unplug and reboot when I need to make a phone call.
If none of the above suggestions work and your phone still does not ring when you have incoming calls, then talk to a customer care person at the Magic Jack website:
http://www.magicjack.com/9/customercare.asp
September 21st, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I was excited about the magic jack but I cant get it to work It seem as if Im going to use my trial period trying to get it to work HELP
October 9th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
How can the length of the phone line possibly effect whether the phone will ring or not? We’re talking fractions of an ohm difference in impedance.
By the way I’ve tried 2 phones now that will not ring, even with short phone cords. A third phone rings even with a long cord.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:00 am
ok I’m just curious why people keep saying they are leaving me messages, but yet I can’t seem to have any messages on my phone. when I click on the voice mail thing, it rings my own phone and then it’s busy… strange
January 16th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Voice mail does need to be set up, which you have probably already done. See if you can run it through set up again.
Hope this helps!
March 10th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
this is what a friend of mine said about his magic jack. He is a radio technician.
“The MagicJack has a DC to DC converter to make the 5 VDC into 48 VDC (though a 1K resistor) to make the device look like a real phone line. However the ringing is not 100 VAC 20Hz like a real phone line, they pulse the 48 VDC at a 20Hz rate to simulate the ringing. As a consequence, it can’t ring an old fashioned phone bell, in fact none of the phones will ring with that much of a load. To insure success in receiving incoming calls, make sure that the REN of the phone (look at the bottom of it) is 0.0B, indicating that it does not load down the line.”
In essence you can not use a phone that needs HIGH line voltage to make it ring. I has to be a phone that needs little or almost NO current or voltage to activate it.
hope this helps.
Bryan
May 31st, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Bryan,
That doesn’t help either.. I have the Ren 0.0B. I went online with their chat helpline, and they went through most of what has been suggested here. The final word is about some phones don’t work and some do and they are working the issue. When asked for a list.. they had none.. so I beginning to feel like this was a bad idea… if anyone else has a suggestion or if you could let me know if your phone rings… I have a GE 6.0 base station phone with 3 sat phones… only it will do .. and this was at the first… lighty rang like an old telephone.. just once… the only other thing it does is the screen lights up when a call comes in.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:24 pm
@ Bryan & Mike,
I’ve used an old dial phone with success as far as the ringing goes. But since it has a dial I do have to use the softphone screen to dial a number.
June 8th, 2009 at 6:05 am
I was using a very basic Panasonic phone with MJ and it worked. Everything worked. I got TERRIBLE connections, the phone would cut out for 4-8 seconds on EVERY call over 3-4 minutes. I started telling customers, if my phone cuts out.. hang on it will come back… nice… I figured it was my nasty old phone. SO,I go get a nice new Motorola today, which is a basestation with answer machine that also has a handset so are not FORCED to use speakerphone when the handset is out in the garage… and the wireless handset (the one you leave in the garage) on a seperate charger. OK.. now I have the best of both worlds, except.. as above.. it will not ring. Old crap phone rings, new nice phone, that even shows Caller I.D. on the cordless handset, will not ring. Formatted, reloaded, found that the driver had dropped off the list under Device Manager (Look for Internet Phone by Tiger Jet, it is *supposed* to be on the list under Sounds and Games) Spent an hour on Live chat with level 3 tech support, all she could say was MJ doesn’t recommend using two phones. I asked well.. a phone with a base station (speaker phone) and a handset is two phones? YES…. sorry. Oh you can try an AC USB Hub to give it more power (as mentioned above) it didn’t help, but that means alteast they know about the problem. I figured $20 a year was too good to be true.
June 19th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I cant find the “Do Not Disturb” button on the menu. It use to be under the “ready to call” bottom on the magicjack dial page. How do I put it back or re able it. Thanks
June 19th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Kelly from what I understand, the “Do Not Disturb” feature was discontinued in a recent upgrade of this service.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Why was the ‘DND’ Service discontinued??!! I loved that. I could listen to my music when I was asleep, and not have my retarded friends wake me up. Now I can’t listen to music and not have to be worried about being interrupted, or woken by the phone.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
This is not correct. There is no option for “do not disturb”. Try turning on phone instead. It toggles between headset and telephone.
November 26th, 2009 at 1:17 am
yea ppl that are having problems with getting there phone to ring all u need to do is goto menu and switch it to headset while your not in a call…it will ring thru your pc speakers..then when you answer it switch it back to telephone…when done with call switch back to headset…yea i know pain in the ass…but it works..hope that helps?
January 10th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
When I call my number, I get electronic tones like a fax machine. I can’t get my MJ connected phone to ring either.
January 10th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
I don’t have a DND option, and “switch to headset” doesn’t make the phone ring either. I still get electronic tones as if it is a fax machine.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
The only option that worked for me is changing to “Switch to Headset” which is the top option on the soft screen under Menu. I tried every phone I had and every phone my neighbors had with 0.6, 0.8 0.0 and nothing worked until I switched it to headset and now at least it rings through the speakers!!
March 22nd, 2010 at 11:13 pm
I was having the same problem with a new motorola dect 6.0 cordless phone and tried all of the suggestions and i was never able to make it ring, so i bought a really cheap phone and a (Y) phone jack i plugged the single side in my cheap phone and on the double side i plug magic jack and my motorola, now i can hear the cheap phone ring and can use my new cool cordless to answer and do every thing else. I know its not the best solution but i didnt want to be always calling beside my pc, so there you go hope it helps some of you until they fix this problem
April 19th, 2010 at 2:54 am
majic jack phone keeps ringing even after the voice mail has answered it
July 21st, 2010 at 2:00 am
I had a problem with my phone ringing also. I find that a old touch tone phone works and my 0.1B Ren Panasonic Cordless KX- TG2420 model rings.