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Voicemails not showing up until days after they were left

C

I'm fuming. I'm paying money for a service that is not giving me missed call notifications, not giving me voicemail notifications, and does not even have voicemails arrive in my inbox until days after they were left (which I can only find out by checking manually!).

From what I've seen this is a long term issue with you guys too. Congrats on the great service. I didn't want that interview anyways.

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Best answer by tmo_amanda 26 November 2018, 19:22

Hey everyone!

Over the holiday, some progress was made on the issue as we're receiving more reports of issues with voicemail. What we need to determine is if the voicemail is not being deposited to your voicemail box right away (as it should be) or if it's just a delayed notification. This happened to both me and my husband (we both have iPhones) last week and I had a chance to do some testing to narrow down what exactly is happening. It doesn't appear that the actual voicemail is delayed but instead the MWI (message waiting indicator is delayed). Personally, I am seeing a delay of about 3 days.

Here are the steps I need each of you that are still experiencing this to take:

  1. If you receive a delayed notification of a voicemail being left, take note of the time, date, and phone number the voicemail was left and when you received it.
  2. Community-2153 via 611 or T-Force (over Facebook or Twitter)
  3. Have them file a Service Complaint under "MWI: Voicemail notifications (MWI) are delayed
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97 replies

tmo_amanda
Rank
Userlevel 5

Hey, @cholmes87​!

Welcome to our Support Community! It sounds like the delayed voicemails have cost you some business or even a job which isn't good at all. Let's see if we can figure out what's going on.

  • When did this start?
  • What type of phone are you using?
  • Have you talked to Tech Support about this yet? If so, what was the outcome?
  • Are all voicemails delayed or does this happen sporadically?
  • If you turn off WiFi, do you notice an improvement in the voicemail delivery time?
tmo_mike_c
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +14

Hi there!

Amanda asked some great questions that'll help us get this figured out for you. Can you give us a reply back and let us know the answers? Thanks!

M

I am having the same issue with my new Galaxy S-9

tmo_mike_c
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +14

Is this happening with a specific number? Is the issue with the phone just not showing that someone's left you a voicemail?

tmo_mike_c
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +14

Hey there!

Just checking in to make sure this was resolved. Please let us know if you need more help.

tmo_chris
Rank
Userlevel 5

Just checking in one last time.

tmo_amanda
Rank
Userlevel 5

@cholmes87 and @magenta5110597​!

If you're still having issues with delayed voicemails, please reply back with answers to the questions I originally asked a few weeks ago. In the meantime, we're going to mark this post as assumed answered because we haven't heard back.

M

Hello, yes, I'm still having issues with not receiving voicemails. I have

an iPhone 6 and I've had this issue for as long as I've had the phone.

These are the issues that I've experienced:

- some one says they left me a message, but I never get it.

- someone leaves me a message, but I don't get it for sometimes DAYS after

- my phone indicates I have a message, but when I go to try to listen to

it, it says the voicemail is "0:00" minutes long, and it's grayed out so I

can't listen to anything.

I would love to fix this issues.

thanks,

Amy Shoup

D

Hello Amanda and Team,

I am piggy-backing on the OP's question b/c I have the same problem.

1.     When did this start? A few weeks ago after I flew from LA (Pacific time zone) to Detroit (Eastern time zone). Also, the problem continued after I returned to Los Angeles.

2. Alcatel GO FLIP

3. Did not talk to Tech Support yet. Wanted to try this site first.

4. All voicemails are delayed. Time varies between 16 - 24 hours.

5. How do I turn off WiFi?

Thank you in advance for your help.

C
  • When did this start?

Since the beginning of service.

  • What type of phone are you using?

iPhone 6.

  • Have you talked to Tech Support about this yet? If so, what was the outcome?

No.

  • Are all voicemails delayed or does this happen sporadically?

This happens every time I receive a call when I am not connected to the T-Mobile network. Sometimes it is delayed for a matter of hours, other times it is delayed upwards of a week. Missed calls are another thing entirely -- I never get the notifications.

  • If you turn off WiFi, do you notice an improvement in the voicemail delivery time?

No difference. This has not changed since my original post.

B

I just experienced this, for the first time that I'm aware of, today. Looked at my phone earlier, nothing; looked at it a few minutes later, 12 missed calls/voicemails. Some of the voicemails were from last week and ones that I had expected (Dr office), the rest were fake IRS calls, like usual, lol.

Anyway...

  • When did this start?
    • Today, as far as I know.

  • What type of phone are you using?
    • iPhone 6

  • Have you talked to Tech Support about this yet? If so, what was the outcome?
    • No.

  • Are all voicemails delayed or does this happen sporadically?
    • I had no idea this was a thing until today.

  • If you turn off WiFi, do you notice an improvement in the voicemail delivery time?
    • Considering my normal low volume of non-spam calls, I'm not sure how I'd notice as I don't typically expect calls except in a few situations.

I remember having a similar problem years ago, when I was with AT&T.

T

I first encountered this three or four weeks ago, and T-Mobile support was worse than useless: it was infuriating.

It took me about a week to realize the problem was occurring, but after more than one person told me they had left a message I didn't know about, I realized that I wasn't getting notifications. I called T-Mobile support, and found out that you can access your voice mail by pressing and holding the "1" key on the keypad, and sure enough, I had multiple voice mail messages I hadn't realized were waiting for me. Anyway, T-Mobile support said that they'd look into it, so I expected that it would be fixed in a day or two.

A few days later, I realized that I still hadn't heard anything, and confirmed (by calling myself from a different phone / number) that the problem hadn't been fixed. I called T-Mobile support again, and was informed that they had looked into it, determined that everything was working fine, and had CLOSED THE TICKET WITHOUT CONTACTING ME. So not only was the problem still there, but they weren't spending any more time trying to fix it and hadn't told me that they weren't. Once again, they said they'd look into it, and few days later the exact same pattern was repeated: after nothing had changed, I called back and was told that they had closed the ticket and weren't investigating it any more, but would open a (now third) ticket for this same problem. As you can imagine, by now I was getting pretty ticked off at having to call back repeatedly and with them closing tickets associated with unresolved problems and not even notifying me they had been closed.

About a week ago, I called yet again, and this time was put on hold for a long time. Eventually I had to leave my desk for a meeting, so I just hung up and figured I'd have to live with the problem since T-Mobile was either unwilling or unable to fix it. Yesterday, though, I noticed that I had actually received a voice mail notification, so apparently the problem did go away. Given my experiences with T-Mobile support and the timeline, I suspect that it's likely that the problem going away was more incidental than a result of my calls, though.

This was my first time to contact T-Mobile support with an actual problem and it was a horrible experience. Other than what I've described here, I've had no trouble with the service in the years I've been with T-Mobile, but at this point I don't think it would take much for me to make me abandon this company for one of its competitors and hope that their support is at least a little better.

G

This is NOT an isolated problem, as the same thing has been happening to me.  People leaving voice messages, and NO voicemail notifications being provided.

T

I have to say this has been happening to me as well.   I am not receiving voicemail notifications on my SG8 Active.   A call will goto voicemail and I won't see notifications. If I open the tmobile voicemail app and let it sync then I will see they left a voicemail

S

I am beyond frustrated right now. This has been happening to me with every single call that leaves me a voicemail since moving to  iPhone Xs. I just got a voicemail today from Saturday and last week I got three voicemails from September. What do we need to do to get this remedied?

M

Same issue here... First time was about a week ago, and I figured it was just a glitch. Since then, some voicemail messages have come in as soon as they were left, then others come in much later. Today one came in that was left for me a week ago!

T-Mobile... Fix this NOW or I'll take all 5 of my phones to Verizon tomorrow.

L

I'm having the exact same issues....voicemail is left, and when I check my voicemail...no messages available. This is a huge issue T-mobile, fix it!

D

I just now received 8 voicemails all at once that had been left for me over the past 11 days.  Not good. 

M

Same issues with my two phones. It is very random and delayed by several days.

M

I have been receiving voicemail messages without notification for about 2 weeks. I went to the T Mobile store after tech support could not help me. Was on the phone for about an hour with lengthy holds only to have them tell me they would call back in a day. The call never came so off to the local T Mobile Store. The guy there spent 20 mins working on it and pronounced it an Apple issue. Called Apple tech support who got a three way call with T Mobile. The result was both company reps were going to get back to me in 24 hours. Guess what didn't happen.

Meanwhile I'm forced to randomly check my voicemail throughout the day. I'm a physician and have missed two calls that were potentially bad but ended up ok. I hate to consider going to another carrier but from what I'm seeing T Mobile is unable or unwilling to fix this problem. Frustrating. 

G

After visiting two T-Mobile stores with one of them connecting me with T-Mobile tech support, I FINALLY got some help.  Not sure what they did, but tech support was able to send a voice message to my phone, and the voicemail notification popup showed up on my screen for the first time in I don't know how long.  The fix included clearing the phone cache, resetting some settings, disabling wifi calling.  I was able to get help after some yelling and screaming at T-Mobile, and letting them know that I'm not the only one with this problem (thanks to this community forum).  The only thing they couldn't fix was the disappearance of the voicemail log and icon on the phone page, so for that they transferred me to Lenovo (I have Motorola Moto e4).  That did nothing, as it appears that either a software or security update eliminated that feature.   At least the voicemail notification is working again.  For now.

M

This morning i tested my email and for the first time in weeks I received a notification chime and an illuminated voicemail icon. Not sure if anything was done by T Mobile. If so thank you. If not that, uncertain why it is working.

W

I switched from AT&T because of the visual voicemail delays on their service. I switched to T-Mobile and everything was working great until a few months ago. It happens almost everyday now. I never know if I have a voicemail unless I manually call in. It happens on my iPhone X and my wife’s iPhone 7. I’m beyond frustrated....

T

I agree that something has happened recently.  I don't know when it started as I didnt pay attention.

I like to keep my data turned off on my phone and only turn it on when I want to use it (S8 Active with most current firmware update).   Voicemails used to give an indicator in the status bar when there was one.  I would open up visual voicemail and let it sync and listen to the voicemails that way.  Now these days I don't get that indicator in the status bar.  I have to open up visual voicemail and let it sync to see if someone left a voicemail.

I did an experiment today...  I went into the settings in visual voicemail and disabled it. At this point data is required to be turned on for it to contact Tmobiles servers.  It tells you that you will need to call into your voicemail to listen to anything now.

After I disabled the visual voicemail I turned my data back off and restarted my phone just to make sure I was working from a blank slate.   Once my phone was restarted I called it from another phone and let it goto voicemail and left a message.   After that I got the standard voicemail indicator in the status bar!

So I turned data back on and went into visual voicemail to reenable it.  It retrieved the voicemail.  I thought this fixed it...  but it did NOT.

Upon turning data back off (with visual voicemail reenabled) I left another voicemail.   I did NOT receive any indicator that I had a voicemail.   Turned data back on and synced Visual Voicemail and it retrieved the voicemail just fine.    Leaving data ON I left another voicemail and I received a different voicemail indicator.  This was a Visual Voicemail specific indicator.

So I tried this experiment several times of disabling visual voicemail and leaving voicemails and got the old indicator every time.  Reanabling visual voicemail with data ON gives me this newer visual voicemail indicator.   But if data is OFF then you never get a voicemail indicator.

It never used to do this!   I could have visual voicemail enabled but data off and get that old voicemail indicator..  Tmobile has updated something in the voicemail system...

W

I just got off the phone with T-Mobile tech support. The rep told me that my visual voicemail feature was turned off on my account and she would "re-activate" it. I know it wasn't off because some voicemails would show up... anyway, I will see if whatever she did actually helps anything over the next day or so and report back...