It was announced mid-week and supposed to be live by Friday, but Vodafone still seems to be struggling with getting visual voicemail working for iPhone users.
While many Vodafone-connected iPhone users have reported good experiences with the feature since it became public knowledge last week, some have complained on social networking sites and in other forums that they still can’t access the feature, despite having up-to-date software in place. Lifehacker contacted Vodafone over the weekend, and the company said a “technical team was looking into the issue”, and promised a fuller explanation by the close of business on Monday. That never happened.
Visual voicemail was never part of the launch package for iPhone on any Australian carrier, so customers who have signed up might not feel they are missing out. But having announced the feature, it’s a little disturbing that Vodafone can’t get it working properly for everybody.
Are you loving visual voicemail, or cursing its absence? Share your experience in the comments.
mentallyimpaired
June 2, 2009 at 12:35 PM
I hadn’t got it working until yesterday at 4.45pm. I saw advice ranging from ‘restart it regularly’, ‘just wait’ and ‘restore your phone’.
I had restored it on Friday afternoon, and no luck – it’s an over-the-air carrier update I’m told. After restarting it at least 20 times over Sunday, Monday, and on Tuesday – I decided that afternoon to bite the bullet and restore it again. It worked immediately afterwards – not too sure why, but hell – it’s working and I’m happy.
I do think Vodafone could have handled the launch a little better – saying that it would be enabled by ‘mid june’ for all customers rather than the few days they thought it’d take.
In the end, good on them for implementing it – really pleased with having the service and I can understand it’s probably not an easy thing to roll out to existing users.
Report Permalinkfrustrated_w_VV
June 2, 2009 at 11:19 PM
Well I tried last week, VF support could not help and directed me to Apple support. They guided me to restore – still no VisualVoicemail. No further help or follow up.
Report PermalinkIn our office we must have 30 odd iPhones on corp VF plans and guess what – no one working!
I agree with “mentallyimpared” – VF could have
1) trained their people
2) understood and communicated via their web pages the delay and issues
3) worked with Apple to streamline issue handling
The VV feature has been in all apps versions since 2.0.2 apparently so it is a VF provisioning issue…
Jonathon Hayward
June 3, 2009 at 12:45 AM
Yup, it seems doing a software restore on the phone forces it to download new carrier settings from Vodafone. I did it on Sunday and got a new voicemail notification straight away, with Visual Voicemail working flawlessly.
Now I’ve just got to put my six pages worth of apps back in the order they used to be in – software restore just put them back randomly :(
Report PermalinkTim Woodland
June 3, 2009 at 4:59 PM
It seems you are all correct in doing a software restore.
Report PermalinkI would have thought doing a network settings reset (Settings, General, Reset, Reset Network Settings) would have been enough. I had been doing this all day, and all day yesterday with no luck. But obviously a software restore does something a bit different because I finally gave up and went through with a restore to find visual voicemail working instantly!
Someone should really let Vodafone know!
Steve Taylor
June 11, 2009 at 7:55 PM
My understanding is: you need to have 3G data access for this to work as indicated by the text’3G’ at top left of screen (where the wifi indicator is when at home)
Report PermalinkJeremy Smart
June 18, 2009 at 10:38 PM
The restore worked for me! A bit of a hassle, but as long as you back up before you do it (which it did automatically for me), all should be great.
Pay attention, Vodafone. This is the crucial element, and could help a lot of people.
Report Permalinkmuldoonfox
June 26, 2009 at 5:39 PM
Tried the restore but it didn’t work. Hopefully this will be fixed by somebody soon and they’ll let everyone and Vodafone know! All the best to anyone else trying to get it to work!
Report PermalinkAndrew pender
June 29, 2009 at 1:39 PM
I’ve been trying for over 2 weeks to get my voicemail back. Worked fine initially, then sporadically, now not at all. I can’t get ANY form of message notification to work!
Spent hours on hold to VF, done resets and all the rest, still no luck. My problem was “escalated” by VF a week ago but there seems to be no action.
I administer our corporate plan with VF and can’t wait for renewal time…
Report PermalinkUWAZell
March 22, 2010 at 4:00 AM
This post is from 2009 and they still haven’t solved the problem. My visual vm was working until about a week agon
Report Permalinkpaul
March 22, 2011 at 8:58 PM
while i hate beating the drum for vodafone: i had visual voicemail on my iphone since september last year (start of my contract) and it seems to have been one of the few things i never had problems with.
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