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After 13+ years of Verizon and Verizon provided Androids, I just purchased an unlocked Motorola One Ace from Best Buy. Now my visual voicemail service is gone. It can't be activated on my new phone & the visual voicemail add-on has vanished from my My Verizon account.
While I appreciate not being charged for an add-on my new phone can't activate, I had no idea that an unlocked phone would lose this feature. I find it essential to weed through VM messages. I wish I had known this. I even paid the extra fee to get my phone info transferred over in the store just to avoid surprises like this.
After getting confused looks and no direction from serval in-store employees, I was finally directed to contact Verizon tech support to see if there's a work around for this. Otherwise, I'll have to use a 3rd party app and the ones I've seen seem pretty invasive. (porting numbers over, etc)
I thought I'd ask here before calling tech support:
QUESTIONS:
IS there a work-around to get Verizon visual VM back for my new phone?
If there isn't--and that's disappointing--can anyone recommend a 3rd party app or some other solution?
(I've heard of people returning their new unlocked phone for a Verizon phone of the same make but that would be a pain--wiping clean/returning the new phone & paying more for the same one from Verizon. Not to mention the lost fee I paid to activate it in-store, etc. I bought it elsewhere to save money so then I would be out both time and money.)
I wish Verizon staff would have known about losing visual voicemail when I spoke with them about the possibility of buying an unlocked Motorola. I thought I had covered all my bases.
Thank you for any advice.
Hello EYASTA! Thank you for reaching out. We're sorry to read about the experience you had with your new phone. Unfortunately, when you buy unlocked devices, we can't guarantee that all service will work. Visual Voicemail won't work on non-Verizon devices. The good news is that the Visual Voicemail is included in your plan, so you're not paying anything extra for this service. You will need to call *86 to listen to your messages. If you need this service, you will need to return your current phone, and get a Verizon device. I hope this clarifies your question. We'll be here if you need us. ~Aaron
Thank you for that prompt reply, Aaron.
I DO wish this were made clearer beforehand, especially since I spoke with multiple Verizon employees in advance about any differences an unlocked phone would entail & no one mentioned losing visual voicemail. Especially since I paid extra for the new phone to be set-up in the store.
You are very welcome, EYASTA. We're very sorry to hear about the unexpected troubles that have come up with using visual voicemail while having an unlocked device as opposed to a Verizon Wireless device. Since the Motorola One Ace device that you have is not a Verizon Wireless device, we are unable to guarantee that all of our features from Verizon Wireless will operate correctly on it. Are you able to use basic voicemail on your device by dialing *86 as an alternative? -Brett
The Motorola phone you have sounds like it might be using the Visual Voicemail option also found in the Google Pixel phones. I don't know if Google voicemail feature has a transcription option or not. If this is same voicemail feature as the Google Pixel phones, you should have your voicemail setting in your MyVerizon account online the same way as it works for the Pixel phones. I can't remember if you need to have the voicemail set to the basic non-visual voicemail feature or the basic visual voicemail feature for your line to get it to work.
I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.
The premium Visual Voicemail feature requires a Verizon Wireless branded phone with the Verizon Visual Voicemail application pre-installed. If you absolutely need the premium version with the transcription option, you will need a different phone.
I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.
We understand the importance of having access to your Visual Voice Mail and features. To better assist you, please send us a Private Note.
~Maria
Hello, all.
Well, I'm happy to report that my unlocked Motoroal One Ace 2021 128 GB phone from Best Buy IS finally getting voice-to-text voicemail. And it's from Verizon. THANK YOU, JUSTINE, my heroine from Tech Support! 😇 😀
It turns out that some unlocked phones ARE capable of Premium Visual Voicemail/voice-to-text.
I called tech support today because I wasn't seeing a 5G icon on my screen even though I upgraded to a 5G plan last week. (That's another story... 😫 )
Justine was puzzled about my voicemail-to-text woes since she saw that my account WAS offering me the option for premium voicemail (e.g. necessary for voicemail-to-text which is what I've had all these years). She said that wouldn't happen if my new phone couldn't accomodate it. Then she checked my phone's specs on her device spreadsheet using its IMEI # and it showed that the phone itself WAS compatible with voicemail-to-text. She said I just needed to add the $2.99 Premium Voicemail back to my account like before. She sent me the link to do that, I rebooted my phone while she hit some keys and, voila, I started getting voicemail-to-text messages again for $2.99/mon. Just like before.
Justine explained that this isn't true for all unlocked phones but it is for some of them. She said I should check Verizon's Bring Your Own Device page to see if a specific unlocked device will work. (I did that after the call but it didn't specify Premium Voicemail. Justine talked about a device resource only for techs and I bet that's where she found the information based on my phone's IMEI.)
I do wish that Verizon would have everyone on the same page when it comes to technical support and plan information. I hope that my experience here might help others with the same issue.
EYASTA, thanks for the feedback and we're glad Visual Voicemail is working on your unlocked Motorola Once Ace. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with our community forums.
- Alan