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T-Mobile (USA) Update Causes Mayhem With Voicemail Indicators

mkrishnan

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
An update T-Mobile apparently implemented in the past 2 days seems to be causing major problems for voicemail on unlocked iPhones. AFAIK, this issue only affects iPhones on T-Mobile in the United States (where they have presumably been unlocked for this purpose).

The issue causes voicemail alerts to not function properly -- instead of causing the voicemail red ball indicator to appear on the Phone icon in the springboard, instead, they generate spurious, blank SMS entries (typically no sender or contents, I think some of them have a lone "@" in them). When one checks voicemail, the fake SMS entries also get created when it tries to clear out the new voicemail indicator.

I found this out, sadly, because I rebooted my iPhone this morning -- it didn't happen until then (but I also didn't receive a voicemail I think yesterday or today).

Here are some references:
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?p=12518412#post12518412
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/f127/71287.htm#post406903

I'm still poring through them, but there doesn't seem to be a good fix right now. :(

EDIT: Two things are suggested as fixes or workarounds:
- Some users report that getting a new SIM from T-Mobile solved the problem, but others reported that they did the same and it did not solve the problem

- Some users are using Youmail as an alternative. I'm going to give this a try, since people say Youmail actually does some fun stuff. Here's some info. This seems to be at least a temporary solution, although if one has the problem that the voicemail indicator red ball is shown on boot, there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of it, as calling their voicemail service doesn't seem to get rid of it.
 
guyverzero said:
Is it known whether this is a charged text? Or is it free since its from T-Mobile?
Click to expand...

People in HowardForums claimed it was charged, although I'm not really sure. Good question!

By way of update, Youmail seems imperfect but it has some great features. So far, receiving SMS's from it doesn't seem to work. :rolleyes: Other people seem to have reported that sometimes, Youmail has a substantial delay in sending out SMSes. Sending an e-mail with an MP3 copy of the voicemail seems to work quite well, however. I just set my receive account for the e-mails to be one (my AOL one) that I never use.
 
So that's the problem. I called T-Mobile not knowing this and they gave me 60 free messages to balance out the problem. But I need a real fix for this.
 
I got a hold of a tech level 2 at T-Mobile concerning this problem. We went through many steps and nothing resolved it.

Their system sees an error sending the Voicemail Call Waiting Indicator setting and sends the text message as a way to let you know you have VM. It is their way of supporting older outdated phones or non-T-Mobile phones.

You can ask them to turn off the Voicemail Call Waiting Indicator and the text messages will stop. I did that for a night, but turned them back on.

I checked, these are not charged against your account. I dialed #674# to check my text bank and then forced the vm message and it did not change.

I also checked it on my wife's pay as you go phone and found the same thing.

My phone with a plan has the VM red dot indicator off all the time, while my wife's pay as you go phone has it on.

Hope this helps, and I hope T-Mobile fixes it!
 
Springboard crashing

Hi everyone, I hope I'm posting in the right place. All of a sudden for the first time I am having issues with my iPhone. When I get a missed call win a voicemail, instead of a missed call/ new voicemail notification I get a text message from no one, I'm guessing the phone itself of "@" just the @ sign. And then I get a "sad iPhone" picture as my wallpaper and a warning that my springboard crashed asking to restart. I've restarte but still the issue persists.

I'm using the first gen unlocked iPhone with 2.2.1 on t-mobile. I have cydia but I don't use it.

Please help. It also has the new voicemail icon but I don't have a voicemail.
 
k2dragon said:
ive been looking for answers of what was going on. its good that i have unlimited txt.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's exactly right. The only workarounds right now seem to be:

1) Have T-Mobile de-activate the VM indicator -- your VM works normally, but you won't get an alert that you have voicemail. Depending on [I have no idea what], some people will have the voicemail indicator bulb on all the time and some will never have it on.

2) Activate an alternative service such as Youmail or Google Voice (if you have an invitation). The advantage is that you can get an alert via either detailed SMS (e.g. with name / number of caller, duration of message, etc) or e-mail (which includes the aforementioned plus even an MP3 sample of the message) and you can get a browser-based visual voicemail functionality too. The big disadvantage is that these alerts typically don't seem to be that instantaneous -- the SMS doesn't always appear instantly, and the e-mail is limited by the e-mail system. Probably the latter can be made a little faster if you can dedicate a push e-mail account to the messages. Also, while you can still use the voicemail button in the Phone app, the indicator will always be on or off, as above.

It would seem nicer if they can just fix the signals being sent to our phones. It's odd that only this phone is affected -- so far, it doesn't seem like the change makes anomalous behavior on any other official or unofficial / unlocked phone besides the iPhone. Hopefully the number of people who've called T-Mobile will make them consider implementing an iPhone fix? :eek:
 
We need help! This is very uncool. It started Friday for me and my wife!
 
EDIT: Modified with better information.

CC424 said:
We need help! This is very uncool. It started Friday for me and my wife!
Click to expand...

If you want T-Mobile to do something about it (and they may or may not be able to do so), contact them!

It turns out that T-Mobile no longer has a published e-mail address to which one can write customer service inquiries (they did until mid-March). I tried using their online system but got funneled to a typically unhelpful chat session. So, instead, a little digging revealed an e-mail address for their (very customer focused) US CEO, which I elected to try out:

mkrishnan said:
Dear Mr. Dotson,

After having been a customer of T-Mobile since 2003, with a Nokia 3650, then a RAZR V3, then a Blackberry 8700g, I decided to purchase an unlocked iPhone and use it on my T-Mobile account last year. I understand completely that this was my decision and that this is not a hardware device you support. Your agents were nonetheless very helpful and got my APN set up for me, and it has worked well since then.

As you may have heard by now, a change made by T-Mobile to the voicemail service has wreaked havoc on users of unlocked iPhones. Briefly, the change that was made around Thursday or Friday of this week (e.g. 04/23 or 04/24/2009) causes the iPhone to receive repeated blank SMS messages whenever you try to send a voicemail status alert. The iPhone then fails to correctly change its status indicator (i.e. new voicemail or new voicemails cleared), and instead shows the blank SMS's.

The change seems to affect all unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile, and all of our phones worked correctly with the voicemail indicator / voicemail alerts from T-Mobile until this weekend, meaning that the change seems to have occurred on T-Mobile's side.

I believe this issue has been reported to T-Mobile by many people already, and I understand that there may not currently be a fix. I implemented one of the suggested workarounds myself, but I want to ask you to consider if there is a way to accommodate us by providing us with voicemail status alerts through your system that work properly with our phones. Once again, I recognize that we made a decision to use unsupported hardware, but this unsupported hardware has previously worked very well with your network and was my primary reason at this point for continuing to be a customer of yours.

As a long-term customer, I want to continue on with T-Mobile for years to come, and I would very much appreciate any assistance you can provide in this regard.

--
Mohan Krishnan
[my phone number]
Customer since 2003
Click to expand...

If you wish to send an e-mail to him, that e-mail address is rdotson@t-mobile.com .... Every little bit helps, I guess.
 
SMkdesigns said:
i cant recieve any calls
Click to expand...

Hmmm, this issue does not seem to be causing that problem for anyone else (just tested mine also). This started on a previously working-on-T-Mobile iPhone at the end of last week?

gkarris said:
Same here too..
Click to expand...

Same as the above (incoming calls), or same as the rest of us (blank SMS's instead of VM alerts)?

EDIT: Well!

I received a call today from someone at T-Mobile corporate in response to my e-mail. Of course it came in while I was seeing a patient, and so I'll have to call them back tomorrow, but that was very nice of them. :)
 
Pictures

Hi everyone, I am posting pictures to better illustrate my problem. My last resort would be to do a full restore as I have calendar information that I don't have on my computer... it would be a huge pain to lose all that.

Anyway, as mentioned above, it starts with a new voicemail. Once I receive a new voicemail, I get a text message from my phone of just the @ sign. Then my phone replaces the wallpaper with the sad iphone and the springboard crashes.

Take a look at the "@" text's dates... pretty weird, dating them from 1969 to 2012. :confused:

Anyway, I would appreciate any help on this please! I now have a permanent new voicemail icon, even though I don't have any voicemail.
 

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Not the only one!

I have to say, I'm both happy and sad to hear that I am not the only one experiencing this. :eek:

I was ready to do something drastic (to me it is, full restore) on my phone, good thing I browsed the hack forums.

I will try to call T-Mobile customer service as well to see where they're taking this. They are usually very good with working with customers to appease the situation.

EDIT: I called T-Mobile and they said that the engineers have been working on something with the network. The only option they presented was to turn the voicemail indicator off, but I declined because I could deal with the text messages since I have unlimited. They said that this is high on their priority to fix since customers without text messaging bundles are being charged to receive these phantom texts from the past and future. They knew all about the issue, and already had a speech to ramble off. They predict the most 7 days to fix.

I thought that they were going to say something about using the iphone, how it is not one of their phones, but they didn't. They were just trying to (or trying to appear to) fix the problem that was affecting their customers.

I will be calling back in the next day or two until it is fixed. I generally don't accept service interruption from something I pay for, and will most likely demand something for the inconvenience especially if they take 7 days to fix.
 
same here

Dallas, TX same issue here called Tmobile and the tech claimed some setting he did stopped the text messages however I cant remove the VM icon and I had my wife leave me a VM and then press ** to get out and end the call reset iphone removed sim card and nothing works so very fustrated here as well hopefully issue will be fixed soon
 
qvidal said:
Dallas, TX same issue here called Tmobile and the tech claimed some setting he did stopped the text messages however I cant remove the VM icon and I had my wife leave me a VM and then press ** to get out and end the call reset iphone removed sim card and nothing works so very fustrated here as well hopefully issue will be fixed soon
Click to expand...

The best solution still seems to be Youmail. One doesn't have to have T-Mobile change anything, can activate and de-activate it oneself, etc. But one still can't get rid of the VM indicator red ball. And I still don't seem to get SMS alerts from Youmail. Also the visual voicemail is actually pretty nice. :)

I'll be curious to see what this contact at T-Mo corporate has to say. I would be kind of surprised, if they can do anything about this, because presumably they did this for some reason, but still, it's nice to see they care. They seem to be living up to T-Mobile's customer service reputation.
 
mkrishnan said:
The best solution still seems to be Youmail. One doesn't have to have T-Mobile change anything, can activate and de-activate it oneself, etc. But one still can't get rid of the VM indicator red ball. And I still don't seem to get SMS alerts from Youmail. Also the visual voicemail is actually pretty nice. :)
Click to expand...

Is youmail on cydia or app store I cant find it . .
 
qvidal said:
Is youmail on cydia or app store I cant find it . .
Click to expand...

It's not an iPhone app... Basically, it takes a few steps:

1) Go to http://youmail.com and create an account. Follow the directions to activate it on your phone.

2) Forward calls to Youmail instead of your voicemail by the instructions they provide you.

3) Set the voicemail button in the iPhone to call Youmail instead of T-Mo by this code:

*5005*86*7142043114#

4) Set up Youmail (your greeting, what kind of alert you want when you get a message, etc) and make an icon for it if you want (via MobileSafari -- the page is http://m.youmail.com/mobile/home.do ).

Then, your calls go to your Youmail voicemail instead of T-Mo. You get an alert, and you can either use voicemail on the phone the way you usually do to listen to it, or you can use the Youmail webapp or you can listen to the MP3 attachment to the e-mail you receive, if you wish. Since it doesn't use voicemail alerts, you stop getting the SMSes. But, as stated, if your phone has the red indicator for voicemail on at boot, then it'll be stuck on.

All of this is reversible, FWIW, with similar control codes.

EDIT: This, then is what my home screen looks like with the Youmail icon:

photo-2.jpg


And this is what the visual voicemail looks like in MobileSafari:

photo-3-1.jpg


And this is what it looks like as an e-mail (there's a play link which launches it in MobileSafari, plus there's an MP3 attached at the end to which one can listen right in the message).

photo-3.jpg
 
mkrishnan said:
I'll be curious to see what this contact at T-Mo corporate has to say. I would be kind of surprised, if they can do anything about this, because presumably they did this for some reason, but still, it's nice to see they care. They seem to be living up to T-Mobile's customer service reputation.
Click to expand...

I do agree that they made this update for a reason, however, probably not knowing what it has caused. At this point, they seem very aware that customers are negatively being affected... I have been with T-Mobile for a long time and have never gotten "deal with it" as an answer. I think they will have to concede somehow, worse case, they go back on their upgrade.

I understand at the moment that this is an iphone issue... they can come back and say, get a T-Mobile phone but they would probably lose a lot of customers. I mean, I know more people with T-Mobile using iphones than I do AT&T!
 
VM icon (tmobile)

HEY HEY HEY . . I called tmobile earlier and he did some setting switch and I stopped getting the text msgs . . then I just messing around took out my sim card with the phone on then turned it off . . left it off for about a min or two (time to go to the rest room and open a cold one) turned it on (without the sim card in) waited for it to boot up . . entered my unlock code then waited for the screen to go off . .entered the sim card . .waited 30 seconds (one commerial) and then no VM icon . . placed call . . recieved call sent text message and received text message . . told someone to leave vm didnt get icon . . called vm cleared it and ended call by ** and no icon still

(THESE ARE EXACT STEPS) not a gurentee fix but hey it worked for me hope it works for you
 
qvidal said:
. .entered the sim card . .waited 30 seconds (one commerial) and then no VM icon . . placed call . . recieved call sent text message and received text message . . told someone to leave vm didnt get icon . . called vm cleared it and ended call by ** and no icon still

(THESE ARE EXACT STEPS) not a gurentee fix but hey it worked for me hope it works for you
Click to expand...

So, with these steps, you don't get a voicemail icon either way? Voicemail or no voicemail?

I'm glad you found something that works for you, but I would still like to have a notification icon if I have voicemail...
 
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