Customer service is telling me that AT&T policy says you can't turn off voicemail

[mikesm559]

Hi.  I am trying to use google voice as my primary contact number, and not give out my cell number to others.  I want people to call my google voice number, and have my home phone, office phone and cell phone ring, and if noone picsk up, then to have it google voice take the voicemail and email it to me.  To make this happen, I need to be able to have all the voicemails on these other lines be shut off. 

The problem line is my AT&T wireless number. Even though various folks here say CS is suppose dto be able to do this, I just called to try and have them do it, and the CSR saidthere was a note in their system saying it was against policy, and when he askd his supervisor, he concurred with it.

Am I asking  them the wrong question?   Is there a way of doing thisusing call forwarding (presumably, I don't want a call that came in to google voice to be forwarded back to google voice if there is no answer)?

Thanks,

Mike

[dmapr ACE - Champion]

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mikesm559 wrote:

Hi.  I am trying to use google voice as my primary contact number, and not give out my cell number to others.  I want people to call my google voice number, and have my home phone, office phone and cell phone ring, and if noone picsk up, then to have it google voice take the voicemail and email it to me.  To make this happen, I need to be able to have all the voicemails on these other lines be shut off. 

The problem line is my AT&T wireless number. Even though various folks here say CS is suppose dto be able to do this, I just called to try and have them do it, and the CSR saidthere was a note in their system saying it was against policy, and when he askd his supervisor, he concurred with it.

Am I asking  them the wrong question?   Is there a way of doing thisusing call forwarding (presumably, I don't want a call that came in to google voice to be forwarded back to google voice if there is no answer)?

Thanks,

Mike

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If Google Voice has a separate voice mailbox number you could set call forwarding to that. Otherwise I don't think there's a good way to handle it if the CS refuses to turn the VM off.

[1ofaknd]

not sure if it's against policy, but i know if you fail to setup your vm within the first 60 days of activation, the vm will be completely removed from your account.

I'm sure they can remove it, just a matter of getting someone who doesn't quite know they shouldn't, lol.

[guandalf ACE - Wizard]

I don't believe this is against the policy. I have a few friends who have called AT&T and asked for their VM to be disabled.

[Mister Xiado]

It's not against policy, but it's not advised. If you specifically request it, it can be done easily.

[droopydog]

I am going through this again. I use Spinvox to convert my voice mail into text messages. I previously had them remove visual voicemail from my account and I established the appropriate busy/no answer call forwarding to my Spinvox number. I upgraded to the new 3G S iPhone in June, and discovered they re-added voicemail back to my account. Grrrrrrr. I called in and the CSR said they have no way to remove visual voice mail from an iPhone account. I told them to escalate it because it can be removed in the switch, at least, and it was removed from my account before.

You might ask why you need to remove it; why not just add busy/no answer call forwarding yourself which wold override the busy/no answer call forwarding used for voice mail. The problem I have experienced is at some random times, user programmed busy/no answer call forwarding is deleted, and calls then start defaulting back to the system voice mail busy/no answer call forwarding. When I had voice mail removed previously, that problem went away.

[droopydog]

They finally figured out how to do it. For those of you that might face this in the future, they tie in voice mail with the data plan for the iphone. When they add a standard data plan on your account, that is what gets voice mail added to your account. There are data plans that do not include voice mail. You need to ask the CSR to remove your data plan and add the equivalent plan that does not have voice mail.


droopy

[Mister Xiado]

Voicemail has nothing to do with data outside of the iPhones, and you can disable visual voicemail on the iPhone with a simple feature change.

Voicemail can be killed by either removing the forwarding option for it, or simply killing the feature. Only CSRs and higher ups can do this.

[joako]

I don't understand why AT&T has to treat their customers as { Please keep courteous } . The way its SUPPOSED to work is you disable call forwarding and calls no longer go to voicemail. What AT&T does is automatically re-enable the forwarding if you turn it off! Who cares if you still have a VM box... that's actually what I want but AT&T can't seem to do that just disable the forwarding and not delete your mailbox.

Message Edited by Caretaker on 12-15-2009 10:13:30 AM

[Caretaker]

Thank You for your comments and opinions related to this topic. Due to its date, this thread is now being closed. Should the OP need additional assistance please feel free to open up a new thread.