[Snircle]

I noticed this problem during the last three weeks or so. At first I thought it was due to a long distance commute that passes through several dead zones that was somehow delaying voicemail in the same way as I had experienced with Nextel several years ago. Those delays were only for a few hours, and were only annoying. Recently while staying at home (a large urban area), important voicemails have been delayed up to three days. The voice mail simply pops up out of nowhere and you discover you needed to reply and provide vital work information two days ago. So far that has not been disastrous, but has been annoying in the extreme. Another reason monopoly control by AT&T is bad. No competition always leads to a deterioration in service. This sort of service failure could act to the detriment of Apple and pitching the iPhone as an exchange friendly business phone.

[froopy323]

I have had this problem since day 1 for the initial iPhone. Visual voicemails often take several days to show up. I just pretend the visual voice mail feature doesn't exist and call frequently to check.
It is a bit strange though. AT&T has won millions of customers by making the iPhone deal. You'd think they'd care a little bit about trying to keep them. (Hear that AT&T? The second it becomes available with another carrier I'm GONE!)

[princessmima]

My visual voicemail worked fine until about two weeks ago, when I began to have this problem. Some voicemails show up immediately, others I don't see for days, others I never see. Sometimes I'll get a missed call listing when the voicemail is missing and other times, I won't even get that. I have no idea what caused this problem to suddenly occur. As I'm sure everyone knows, this is an extremely frustrating and inconvenient problem. I am not going to call AT&T because it seems like they are aware of this and just are not doing anything about it.

[aristoxenus]

I'm having it too -- I didn't notice it until the last 30 days, coinciding with my activation of MobileMe but also the 3GS rollout.
I have a Google Voice account that I was putting off using since it seems like a hack, but I have a feeling it's going to be more reliable than AT&T at this point.

[xtos]

i have a fix for this...go to your iPhone and reset the network setting.

iPhone->settings->General->Reset->Reset Network Settings.

Rebbot your device and you should be good to go.

The visual Voicemail delay is mostly contributed to a jailbroken iPhone or the Tethering/MMS hack.

Enjoy!

Chris

[2farrell]

Resetting Network Settings doesn't work for everone and didn't work for me. Resetting the VM Password doesn't always work either.

The VVM issue isn't only attributed to Jailbroken iPhones since mine and many others who have the problem don't.

I spoke to AT&T, they and Apple are aware of the issue since 3.0 came out but obviuosly haven't publicly admitted the problem.

None of the supposed fixes work long term.

The main issue with mine is that I go into areas with little or no signal and if someone calls and leaves me a message I don't get a notification for hours or days unless someone leaves a message while I have a good signal. That never happened with 2.2.1.

This is a Network/Software issue and it'll have to wait for both AT&T and Apple to get their fingers out to fix this.

[ginster]

This has happened to me numerous times, although ATT didn't have much to say except to power the phone off/on. I missed an important date with a friend in NY while on vacation, and just this morning a vm appeared at 8:45am that was left at 8:45 pm. I've had the same experience as jrfields321...the vm shows right after I make a call. Weird and inconvenient and worthy of a fix by Apple/ATT.

[bill9999]

This problem is not exclusive to AT&T. I handle all the cell phones(~100) for the school where I work. Currently we have a verizon cell phone (LG vx3450 basic, no data) that is used by our Nurse On Call. The problem; vmails left/ no notification and calls not ringing and going to voicemail (again, no notification)when the phone is on, not in use and has full signal strength. Replacing the phone didn't help. My next thought was to change service to AT&T. I asked someone using an AT&T cell (Nokia 6650) how their service was. He said "Fine, except sometimes my voicemails don't show up until hours later." Calling Verizon and AT&T support, I was told, "yes it happens, but shouldn't happen that often" We use Sprint as well and I am going to be polling our Sprint user about their experiences. I suspect that many of our users (including me)have this problem but just live with it. Isn't technology great!

[Midwesterner]

This happened to our home AT&T phone, and AT&T said I'm out of luck--they can't help because I deleted the messages after listening to them. Great.
I had 13 "new" messages, from end of June to mid July, all suddenly appear on July 29th, though I had listened to other vmail since mid July and those messages never appeared.

Felt AT&T was very dismissive and needs to fix this issue. Meantime, we showed for appts that had been cancelled etc, and they said they had left messages. When I checked for messages, the mail box was either empty or when there were messages, these new ones weren't among them.

I was starting to think my Vmail was being hacked, till I found this site. phew.

[BettBee]

I have the same problem. I am not surprised others do, as well. I am, however, entirely surprised by the mild tone I seem to be detecting on the part of some effected users.
It seems to me that with the money we pay the damn Death Star for these services, they should at least make the most basic features - like voicemail and texting - work. (Am I the only one for whom text messages are also sometimes delayed for hours?) I have missed time-critical messages leading to embarrassment and other problems.
I feel disregarded by ATT and actually am regretting signing up with them to get the iPhone. It would be great if some enterprising attorney were to get a class-action suit together.
It's bad enough we can't get other basic services like MMS and tethering, but we can't even get the ones ATT is contractually obligated to deliver.
GRRRR!

[rdluu]

I already wrote this but I really recommend YouMail. It is a free service and in the few months I have used them not once have I missed a voice mail.

http://www.youmail.com/home/index.do

[BettBee]

rdluu,

It's nice of you to recommend an alternate service, but I want the one I already pay for to work. I want the Damn Death Star to get the lead out and do what customers pay for - either that or release the stranglehold on the iPhone. X-(

[rdluu]

I 100% agree with you. But in the meantime...why worry about not receiving voice mails. I don't work for them or anything, it is just an alternative I recommend.

[BettBee]

Well, I do appreciate your being so helpful. I'm just very angry at ATT.



As for being notified by texts, those are delayed for me as well (and no, my iPhone is not jailbroken in any way) so I'm not sure I'd even get the notifications from the other service. Also, since I pay for texts I would probably get pretty mad at having to pay ATT to be notified by a third party service because ATT wasn't doing its !@#$%^& job.



GRRRRRRRRRR (not at you, at ATT.)

[yogaone1]

This just started happening on my iPhone 3GS. Do they have a "fix" in the plan??
Thanks rduu for alternative.

[2farrell]

Neither Apple or AT&T are admitting there's a problem.

Apple is blaming AT&T's Voicemail system, AT&T is saying it's Apple's 3.0 Software.

I have to say it's mainly Apple since this wasn't an issue for me with the 2.2.1 Software.

They both need to get their heads out of their collective rear ends and figure this out.

[yogaone1]

Agree 2farrel. I was fine with VM until the software. Apple fix this!!!!

[aliheliga741]

I know many other iPhone users are having this issue and AT&T says it is a known issue. Maybe if everyone calls in and gets a credit they will take this issue more serious. Please pass this along to as many iPhone customers as possible and have them call in and register a complaint and ask for a credit.


Thank you for taking the time to e-mail the new AT&T regarding the delay in receiving voicemail messages. My name is -------. I can definitely assist you with your inquiry.

I apologize for the frustration and inconvenience resulting from the delay in receiving the voicemail messages. Because of the nature of the wireless system, there can be delays in the delivery of such items as voicemail messages, although the long delay that you experienced was excessive. Although visual voicemail is included with the rate plan, I have applied a credit of $10.00 on your account because of the inconvenience. The balance on your account after the credit is a credit balance of $10.00 that can be applied to the next bill.

[tonyy168]

I had this problem when I upgraded to the 3GS. I waited for a week to let AT&T sort it out before I call. WHen the problem persist, I called.

Call #1, to AT&T, forwarded to Apple support. No resolution as we tried every conceivable reset. Call routed back to AT&T, apple rep left the call once transferred, and AT&T attempt conceivable re-provisioning, finally, remove the "profile" and re-created the iphone profile and worked.

two days later, problem re-occured. Called Apple first, they remember me, routed to AT&T, but, this time I insist the apple rep stays on with AT&T. Explained to AT&T of what had happen two days ago, they remove the profile, re-create the provisioning record and ask me to wait for the voicemail system to sync in about an hour.

I am ready to call back to APPLE/AT&T tomorrow and tell them, it did not work. I will keep you posted on the situation. I suspect the 3GS, personally.

[macsuhprize]

I've had a 3G for about ten months and began having (noticing?) this problem a few weeks ago not sure if this happened when the 3GS was released or not. Contacted AT&T support and they bounced me back to Apple tech who bounced me back to ATT. Apple had me roll back to default settings, reboot, and physically call my voicemail (all of which took about an hour on the phone). ATT 'reset' my voicemail box at which point I got a flood of voicemail, some of which had already been downloaded to my phone. Weeks later, same issue. No vm or notification of vm for 8-24 hours after call was missed. Called ATT and level one cs told me to reboot phone and that would solve it. It doesn't. They finally admitted that it's a 'known issue' and happens on Bberrys with visual vm. Is ATT rationing bandwidth? Pretty unacceptable considered how much $ I give them each month.