Home > Consumer Reviews > GE 29869GE2 Digital Answering System with 4 Mailboxes

Awsome features!! The four mailboxes can be utilized very easly. You can leave a message that gives the caller the option of sellecting a mailbox (ex."for Ron press 1 for Deb press 2") or just sort them later by pressing the mailbox you want the message in while the message is playing. Very pleased by functionality.. Longest record time I have seen on a didgital. Hats of to General Electric for this one....

We used the GE in our work place. It functioned flawlessly over a one year period. I've now taken it home to replace my Panasonic tape answering machine that has broken and cannot be replaced. For sound quality, tape machines were better but they are now off the market. This GE is the best substitute I've found. Sound is OK and ease of operating is good. Reliable.

Not many of these separate answering machines around. After reading the various reviews, decided to purchase this machine. The features are great. It was easy to program, and loved the four separate mailboxes. Outgoing message (you can program two different ones) was clear when calling in, and incoming messages also quite easy to understand. Good volume control. Very easy to set up for use. One unusual feature is the line cord to the wall jack; it's fixed to the machine, and it's pretty short. Would prefer a removable cord. Anyway, seems great, huh? Well, after only a couple of weeks, it's broken! Calls come in, and machine picks up, but caller can't hear the outgoing message, nor can leave a message. Tried all the fixes in "troubleshooting," none worked; tried all new cords, everything we could think of. Look somewhere else - poor quality control/reliablity, and it doesn't even have any moving parts! Have an older GE with tape (switched for the extra mailboxes), about 7 years old, still works great! Progress??

Works fine so far. We were looking for an answering machine with four mailboxes, memos, and plenty of record time & this does the trick. We're happy with this product & I would buy it again without hesitation.

Two minor complaints: (1) the voice is a bit robotic (not surprising at this price point, (2) not obvious how to do "erase all" on a mailbox, but I have been too lazy to look at the manual for guidance on this point.

There is a fixed phone cord to where the answering machine plugs into the wall (which one cannot detach from the machine) and it's only about 10 feet long. This may seem like a problem for some if the machine needs to be placed farther than the factory cord can reach but a simple fix is an inline phone coupler that would allow you to plug another phone line (of any desired length) into to reach as far you need to the wall jack. It can be picked up at most electronics stores (including Best Buy) and it simply has two female connections for the ends of two phone cords to plug into so as to act as an extension cord of sorts. Also, the voice on the machine is fairly mechanical and certainly not aesthetically pleasing; however, a personal greeting (recorded by the owner) and all incoming messages are extremely clear. If you're even remotely familiar with electronic devices (such as a VCR) then the machine will be fairly intuitive to program (except perhaps when recording the greeting, which only requires one to press and hold either Announcement A or B, record the greeting, and then release the button - extremely easy to do but not entirely intuitive to discover without reading the manual). There is only one code for all four mailboxes (which wasn't an issue for my roommate and I) but it does allow the owner to remotely check his or her messages. With 40 minutes of recording time, I am very satified with this machine. It's not perfect but what is these days? ;-)