I turned off my cell phone today while visiting a museum.  We're not big
cell phone users, about 100 minutes a month on average.  When I turned
it back on a "voice mail ring" occurred.  When I retrieved the message I
found 3 other messages that were dated from February 6 and 7.  These
voice mail messages were delayed 17 days.

I think I figured out what happened.  From February 5th to the 10th we
were in Whistler, BC, Canada.  We turned the phone on a couple of
times while we were there to confirm it was roaming territory, as we
expected, but 90% of the time we left it turned off.  When were returned
to the U.S. on the 10th we naturally turned the phone back on.  Since
then no one has left us a message, because we always answered the
phone when someone called.  Those messages that were queued up
while we were in Canada, stayed queued up until another message
needed to be delivered, which happened today.

And to answer your questions in advance...  Yes we checked the phone
several times to see if any messages were waiting.  There were none.  Yes
we even called voice mail to see if any messages were waiting.  There
were none.

I suspect that this never would have happened if we simply never turned
on the phone while we were in Canada.

Frustrating.