Apparently it takes 4 support reps to fix my voicemail.
My old phone (Samsung Intercept) has had the bad habit of randomly calling the wrong people or sending SMS messages to the wrong people. Very annoying to click on the button to call my wife only to have it call a guy from church. The past week or two it has also started randomly rebooting, and sometimes is so slow that I can’t get it to answer a call before it goes to voicemail. Ugh.
So Becca agreed to let me buy an unlocked Galaxy Nexus. This phone uses different cell technology than my old phone, so I had to switch carriers. After looking around a bit, I decided to go with Straight Talk on their $45/month unlimited everything plan. The internet is crazy fast and I no longer have to watch my minutes. Yay!
Almost everything went more smoothly than I could have hoped. My number ported just a few hours after I put in the request and I was off and running on the new network. Except for my voicemail. My phone has had this insistent “you have a voicemail” message. When I call my voicemail, it says my mailbox is invalid. Ugh.
I tried to solve the issue on my own but without success. Basically Straight Talk’s idea of online help is “call our support number”. So I gave up and called.
And wanted to shoot myself. These reps have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. I had to put my cell on speakerphone and play the voicemail “invalid mailbox” message for them to get them to believe me that the problem was on their end. After being transferred multiple times and placed on hold for eternity, I was told to keep my phone turned off while they “updated my phone’s features” (what the heck does that even mean, and why would it matter if my phone was off for this alleged update?). At one point they even had me try changing my voicemail number to my own phone number and, surprise surprise, it made it so I got a busy signal when trying to call voicemail.
I eventually just gave up fighting it when they told me to take the battery out of my phone while they worked on my account. Unless spy movies are right and the government is tracking our phones even when they are turned off, I don’t see how taking the battery out could have any effect whatsoever on my voicemail. Actually, even if spy movies are right I don’t see how taking my battery out is going to make any difference.
Finally, 45 minutes and 42 seconds later, I have voicemail access. In hindsight this was a complete waste of time considering how much I abhor voicemail.