I got the same message. I think it is built into my phone thus theirs is not required? I dunno.
Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Smartphone ----- Reply message ----- From: "Ken Hohhof" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG] OT - alternative to VZ voicemail Date: Thu, Jul 14, 2016 6:26 PM Yours may stop any day. http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/discontinue-visual-voice-mail-july-2016/ They are incompetent at ‘splainin’ stuff, they keep focusing on the $2.99 thing. So the price will change? Or there’s a new equivalent at a different price, or free? I was told they use outsourced vendors for their VM, and their vendor will no longer support my device. That implies it will still support newer devices. But then why do they say the $2.99 service is being discontinued? What does the $2.99 have to do with my device not being supported, if other devices are still supported. Are they saying only customers with older devices were being charged for Visual Voicemail? Do the new devices get the free “Basic Visual Voicemail”? http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/voice-mail-comparison/ Hmmmm, even if that still exists, it only supports 20 messages max 3 minutes duration. From: Brandon Yuchasz Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 5:24 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT - alternative to VZ voicemail I have the same phone as well and use the visual voicemail on VZ as well. Mines still ticking along just fine. No *86 for me so far just read the texts and if the transcription is to bad I listen to the playback. I am thinking that perhaps your account is just screwed up and you got a clueless CS person. Best regards, Brandon Yuchasz GogebicRange.net www.gogebicrange.net From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill PrinceSent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 5:14 PMTo: [email protected]: Re: [AFMUG] OT - alternative to VZ voicemail I have the same phone (Droid RAZR Maxx HD). Darn nice phone. All of our other phones are some kind of VOIP thing, which have decent voicemail features. My home phone is Google Voice. That's nice because in addition to the voice mail, it also sends an email and text with a transcript of the voice message. The transcript usually has some kind of transcription error, but it also usually gets the point across. bp<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> On 7/14/2016 2:59 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: Not sure what you mean by requires a smartphone. Hey, my phone isn’t THAT old. I got it about 3 years ago. I realize that’s an eternity in smartphone years, but it’s not like I’m carrying one of these: From: Jason McKemie Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 4:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT - alternative to VZ voicemail I use Google Voice for my voicemail, but it requires a smartphone AFAIK. On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: I have a Motorola RAZR Maxx HD phone and depend heavily on Verizon's "Visual Voicemail" (although I'd sure like to increase the 40 message limit).VZ was sending me these confusing text messages about $2.99 Visual Voicemail going away and the replacement Visual Voicemail would be the same but free or something, I couldn't decipher what they were trying to tell me.Well, today my voicemail reverted to standard VM where you have to dial *86 and step through the messages one at a time using the voice prompts. That just won't work for me. After about 10 minutes on hold with VZ customer support, they discovered the alerts should have said "our outsourced voicemail vendor will stop supporting your device". So one option would be to buy a new phone.Anybody have another suggestion? Is there a third party app in the Google Play store that would work with VZ voicemail? The VZ support rep implied that might be the case but VZ wouldn't support it.Or is there some kind of spiffy third party voicemail service that I could set up my phone to forward to when busy or unavailable (a lot of my VZ calls seem to go straight to VM without the phone ever ringing)? With an Android app, and maybe lots of cool features and storage for more than 40 messages?Or am I stuck buying a new phone just to get a working voicemail app?(Obviously the phone is more than 2 years old, but I won't sign a 2 year contract for a phone anymore, if they even do that. I would end up buying the new phone outright, so not talking chump change.)
