Poll: Is your AT&T iPhone's Visual Voicemail on the fritz?

There’s a sizable uproar building over the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail system crapping out for many AT&T iPhone users. If you use Visual Voicemail on the iPhone (I personally don’t, just text message me), you’ve probably noticed that some random voicemails will show up on your iPhone. There’s usually no missed call associated with the voicemail, and sometimes the voicemail shows up days after the person left the message.

The problem is a big one. Visual Voicemail is a key part of AT&T’s advertised iPhone feature-set, and it just doesn’t work reliably at the moment. The Visual Voicemail bug could potentially hurt your business or your personal life, which is reason enough to cause an uproar. At the very least, the VV bug is really annoying.

AT&T has kept mum on the issue, which could mean they’re working hard on the problem, or they’re ignoring a blogosphere’s worth of outraged comments altogether.

Whatever the case, let us know if your iPhone’s Visual Voicemail is on the fritz. And, if you’re mad enough, leave a comment and let AT&T know what you think!

AT&T’s iPhone Visual Voice – Is it working for you?(survey)

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

apkay

I m using Iphone on T-mo Germany and I have the same problems.
TJK

Yup! One day last week I received 17 voicemails from the week prior. No missed calls, no idea people — mostly who I do business with — needed to get a hold of me.

Honestly, I pay my outrageous bill on time. I pay the premium price for the premium service. And what makes me most upset is that for a fraction of the price I could jail break my phone and go elsewhere. Why do I continue to jump through their hoops when they do not even have the intelligence to run a proper company.

I’m almost upset at Apple for thrusting me through AT&T. Ugh!
Jared

I just checked my voicemail on my iPhone by dialing in and accessing it the old fashioned way. I don’t get that many phone calls to begin with, but I had 4 messages that I hadn’t been notified about, dating back almost a month. I got missed call notifications when the calls were placed, but the Visual Voicemail system failed completely. And we’re all paying for this service because…?
JonCarlo

Ok, ATT is making millions and I pay out the nose for this phone. Honestly, I would love to jump ship and go with another carrier. No MMS (even though the phone supports it), now this? ATT really needs to get it act together especially since this phone practically saved it’s rear in the mobile realm. Common ATT, take care of your bread makers! Honestly, we don’t get what we pay for here because even though we pay out the nose, the service really SUCKS!
Nick

I think the problem is more Apple/iPhone related than AT&T. I’m a nokia user on AT&T and get my voicemails practically instantly, and of course have gps, mms, tethering, email, video, 5megapixel cam, and have absolutely no problems at all.
Drew

I’ve been complaining to AT&T about this on one of the 2 iPhones I pay for for 9 months now. VM has never worked on it and I’ve spent about 15 hrs on the phone with them about it and been sent to the local store 4 times for new sims. Not only do they consistently say it is my device (it isn’t as I can switch sim cards and the problem follows the sim and appears in the other iPhone), but they also try to send me to Apple. Apple of course says switch the sims and determines correctly that it is in AT&T’s system.
AT&T when cornered with the obvious fact that it is their issue just ends the phone call saying it actually is a known problem afffecting very few iPhones and a fix is in the works, for 9 months now… Usually I call on Mondays and they’ll tell me that it’ll be fixed by friday… Many many fridays have passed and no change. This was the first AT&T phone I’ve bought and it will be the last AT&T phone I ever buy.
Martin Klerkx

Just called both AT&T and Apple because my Visual Voice Mail (VMM) is not working and it appears that it stopped working roughly 2 weeks ago. Both the Apple Tech Rep and I were on the line with the 2nd tier support at AT&T. The AT&T rep told me that the problem is nationwide and it is their problem. The failure occurred on July 9, 2009 and they are trying to resolve it. He could not say when it will be fixed. I told both of the reps that AT&T needs to tell their 1st tier support about the problem – because they are frustrating customers. Apple will make an announcement within their support structure of what he learned from AT&T. AT&T issue a notice to their technical support personnel.
ardyhash

hello everybody, this may be caused a setting getting rewritten, possibly when trying to enable tethering. apple is blaming it on the jailbreak, but it can actually be fixed really easily by changing ‘wap.cingular’ to ‘acds.voicemail’ under settings > general > network settings > cellular data network > visual voicemail. i found this solution on a couple of forums and it worked for me. just thought id pass it on here, good luck!
Leslie D

I didn’t realize that I even had an issue until I turned off my phone one day to attend a gym class. I didn’t want my phone interrupting the instructors. When I turned it back on, I had 18 voicemails!! It wouldn’t even let me listen to half of them. The ones I did catch were potential students wanting to attend MY class! I’ve tried all the suggestions from different forums and it corrects itself for a minute. At least old school phones tell you to call your voicemail for a message. Now, I have to call every few hours on the chance I may have a message. How stupid is that?!
Chick C

I pay a substantial amount of money every month to ATT and they need to get their shit together. I’m missing important calls. If it keeps up this way it’ll be cheaper to buy out my contract and move to another carrier, than to lose another job cause I didn’t get the message on time.

Screw ATT
K Man

ardyhash….I have a 3G and tried your solution but when I click Settings > General > Network > I only see “Enable 3G, Datat Roaming, VPN, and WiFi” IS there somewhere else I can chane it?

I locate where it says “wap.cingular” but it won’t let me change or edit it. I went to Settings > General > Profile > More Details. Does anyone have any insight on this?
K Man

Sorry, I meant to say I have a 3GS…may be a big difference or not
Aaron

A simple reset of "all settings" finally did the trick after spending an hour on the phone with AT&T
Jean V

I just upgraded my iPhone software to 4.1. After my phone was rebooted by the upgrade process TWENTY FIVE voice mails appeared that I’d never received — these were going back to the 4th of August. My birthday was in there so I missed five calls from people wishing me happy birthday. I’m unemployed and four of the calls were from potential employers. I’m just sick about it. I got three calls last week from my doctor’s office and I have no idea what those are about — the nurse just said call us back please. Now I have to apologize to everyone and try to figure out what my doctor is calling about. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AT&T !!!!!