I use my iPhone 3gs for business and personal use. I do not get a lot of voice mails, but recently, my fiancee and an elderly relative both told me that they had left vmails for me which I thought I never got because they did not show up in my visual voicemail screen. My fiancee was also not getting a voice mails that I had left for her. The last visual voice mail that I received was dated Sep 9th.
So today, I called my phone from my own phone, thinking that I would test it by leaving myself a message. It put me into my voice mail however and I heard the following:
"You have 22 new messages"
TWENTY-TWO???
I listened to all my messages, including several from neighbors of a vacant rental unit that I own that was undergoing renovation last month telling me that there were very loud noises or the smoke detector going off all night. I also had several calls from my elderly relative whom I watch out for - fortunately, not health related.
Upset, I called AT&T to find out why my visual voice mail was broken. The gentleman I spoke with said that yes, this is a known problem that affects "some, but not all" iPhone users, and that they were working with Apple on the problem.
I asked why they didn't tell their customers that it was broken and he said it was because they didn't know who it affected until we called in. The obvious and ethical approach would have been to notify all customers of the potential for our voice mails to not appear and for us to call our voice mail to check it periodically.
The ONLY reason that ATT would not notify everyone is to hide the fact that there is apparently a widespread problem with their service. I told the call center rep that I was extremely upset. I had 22 un-received voice mails, some of which were very important. I missed business calls, and my former neighbors were unable to reach me about a potentially significant problem with my rental unit. I told him that their response to this problem is completely unacceptable and unethical and I asked him to pass that message to his supervisor and/or management. (Clearly it's not that guy's fault and I was perfectly polite to him, even though I was fuming.)
There is absolutely no excuse for ATT to not inform all iPhone customers (who pay dearly for data and voice plans) when there is a potential service interruption. I feel as if I did not get the service for which I paid. The rep however said that visual voicemail is "free" since the mandatory iPhone unlimited data plan costs the same whether you have visual voicemail or standard old-style voice mail. The fact that it's bundled does not make it "free" - nothing is "free" from ATT.
In any event, if you are experiencing this problem, please post here so we can see how widespread it is. And call ATT to complain. They need to fix this and they need to step up and admit the problem. (I actually don't care that there IS a problem, since there are always issues with cutting-edge technology and I can easily call in to check my voice mail while they work on the issue. But I have to KNOW to do that before I actually CAN do it.)
-Tim.
So today, I called my phone from my own phone, thinking that I would test it by leaving myself a message. It put me into my voice mail however and I heard the following:
"You have 22 new messages"
TWENTY-TWO???
I listened to all my messages, including several from neighbors of a vacant rental unit that I own that was undergoing renovation last month telling me that there were very loud noises or the smoke detector going off all night. I also had several calls from my elderly relative whom I watch out for - fortunately, not health related.
Upset, I called AT&T to find out why my visual voice mail was broken. The gentleman I spoke with said that yes, this is a known problem that affects "some, but not all" iPhone users, and that they were working with Apple on the problem.
I asked why they didn't tell their customers that it was broken and he said it was because they didn't know who it affected until we called in. The obvious and ethical approach would have been to notify all customers of the potential for our voice mails to not appear and for us to call our voice mail to check it periodically.
The ONLY reason that ATT would not notify everyone is to hide the fact that there is apparently a widespread problem with their service. I told the call center rep that I was extremely upset. I had 22 un-received voice mails, some of which were very important. I missed business calls, and my former neighbors were unable to reach me about a potentially significant problem with my rental unit. I told him that their response to this problem is completely unacceptable and unethical and I asked him to pass that message to his supervisor and/or management. (Clearly it's not that guy's fault and I was perfectly polite to him, even though I was fuming.)
There is absolutely no excuse for ATT to not inform all iPhone customers (who pay dearly for data and voice plans) when there is a potential service interruption. I feel as if I did not get the service for which I paid. The rep however said that visual voicemail is "free" since the mandatory iPhone unlimited data plan costs the same whether you have visual voicemail or standard old-style voice mail. The fact that it's bundled does not make it "free" - nothing is "free" from ATT.
In any event, if you are experiencing this problem, please post here so we can see how widespread it is. And call ATT to complain. They need to fix this and they need to step up and admit the problem. (I actually don't care that there IS a problem, since there are always issues with cutting-edge technology and I can easily call in to check my voice mail while they work on the issue. But I have to KNOW to do that before I actually CAN do it.)
-Tim.
