Question

iphone voicemail greeting

  • 20 December 2022
  • 8 replies
  • 896 views

Badge

iPhone 12 Pro Max. Voicemail one day just stopped playing my personal greeting and will only play the default. It lets me record a new greeting, says “your greeting will be used” and then when you call again the old default greeting continues to play. Not only that it does not save any voicemails that are left by a caller. Spent two hours with tech support chat and they reset the voicemail, had me do updates and restarts, and nothing worked. They opened a ticket but it’s been a week with no resolution. I still do not get voicemails and the greeting is still the generic greeting. I have tried switching the kinds of greeting from personal to phone number to my name and back again. Nothing has worked. Does anyone have any suggestions? I don’t think doing a complete reset on my phone will do a thing as this really appears to be on t mobile’s end. Help!


8 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +12

Are you using the default Apple one or the T-Mobile phone one?  Knowing which one may help fix it.

Badge

Good question. I am trying to use the T-Mobile one and tech support had me trying to reset things from both aspects. The iPhone voicemail had my greeting saved and selected to be used, but that didn’t change anything. Same result. Nothing worked. 

Badge

Update...I have spent an additional 2 hours on chat with support, gotten transferred to multiple different “experts” and no one knows what to do. I am to the point now where I want to break my contract and ditch this service. Too bad they won’t let me out without having to give up my first born in fees and charges. So unhappy right now. Three months without a functioning voicemail. I miss the old Sprint. Was a loyal customer for a couple decades. What terrible customer service. The had opened me a ticket and allegedly called me about it. ONCE. It was so early in the morning I was still asleep. Since my voicemail doesn’t work I had no opportunity to call anyone back. And they only called me this once. Now this last time with chat, and I am having to repeat the same troubleshooting over and over and over with each new person they send me to. I am so done.

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

I’m not an expert on iPhones but I believe the voicemail greeting doesn’t reside in the phone but rather on the network. Have you downloaded Visual Voicemail?

Badge

I am curious if anything on your voicemail works. My wife (iPhone 12 Pro) also started seeing issues with her voicemail. For her, she can not retrieve greetings, update her password , or see voicemails from the iPhone “phone” app.  If she calls into the voicemail system (hard press 1), she can listen to her saved messages, hear her greeting , and change her password. We think maybe this started with her update to iOS 16. So far, after 1 week, T-Mobile support has been unable to resolve this and at time seems to not even understand the issue. Twice we were transferred to Apple support and they confirm it is a carrier issue. She also went to the T-Mobile store, and the store manager also believes it is a carrier “back end” issue. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

The way classic GSM voicemail works is that the phone has three conditional forwards (busy, no-answer and out of service). These all point to a voicemail service number. In the case of T-Mobile, it’s +1805-637-7249 (or 43). All a long press on #1 does it to call this number. Visual Voicemail gives you a way to access the functions of voicemail via data and a GUI.

Badge

@drnewcomb Any idea why the iPhone “Visual Voicemail” tab in the Phone app seems disconnected from the backend system?  

Badge

Update for y’all. After another round with support I told them that I was going to cancel my service with T-Mobile. I was a Sprint customer and never actually “chose” TMobile anyway. I let them know this on the standard post-support survey. Woke up this morning and my voicemail was working. No idea why. If I had known threatening to leave would have solved the problem, i would have done this months ago! 😀 I do know that this issue had nothing to do with the phone itself but other than that no idea. My hunch is that it did have something to do with the iOS update, but then again my family all have the same service, same phone, all former Sprint customers from long ago, and they had no problems at all….Thank you folks for the suggestions and I hope your issues get to some sort of resolution faster than mine did! 

Reply