iOS 17 screwed up my voicemail

Hello, I have a huge problem and I need help fixing it. I've never used voicemail because I'm Deaf. I had my carrier disable the voicemail service about 15 years ago and it's still ongoing. I have a iPhone 13 Pro and I never set up voicemail on it because I'm Deaf. Then iOS 17 happened. Turns out there's a very bad thing called "Live Voicemail" that was turned on by default! Why they did that, I don't know! That should have been turned off and let customers decide if they want to use it or not! I didn't and don't! I spent the whole day yesterday troubleshooting with my carrier trying to figure out why I got a red circle with the number 1 in it on the voicemail tab of my phone icon on my iPhone. I updated my iPhone to iOS 17 six days ago and got only one phone call since then. I'm Deaf. I can't answer the phone because I can't hear. But I was shocked and confused as to why/how I got a voicemail message. I couldn't figure out why I had a voicemail message. I spent the entire day yesterday with my carrier trying to figure out what had happened and my carrier verified that my voicemail service was disabled on their side and when they went into their voicemail system, they told me they couldn't find anything in my voicemail box. It's empty. I went online to find out what happened and discovered that Apple released "Live Voicemail". It's Apple's new voicemail service! How do I turn it off?! I already turned off "Live Voicemail" in Settings>Phone>Live Voicemail---OFF! But when I found out that I had to create a password in order to go into the voicemail tab to find out what the voicemail message was all about, I was told that I had to create a greeting. What?! I don't want a greeting! I want zero voicemail! No matter who the carrier/service provider is. I don't want voicemail of any kind, ever. So I'm sitting here, freaking out, because I'm Deaf and I'm struggling trying to figure out how to deal with this voicemail stuff. Help!!! Please!!! How do I get rid of the greeting/recording? How do I permanently turn off the Apple voicemail service? I don't want any voicemail greeting on my iPhone. I want it so that whenever someone calls, my phone rings until the caller hangs up. I don't know why Apple got involved in this. They screwed it up, big time! Please help!!!!!!!

Posted on Sep 23, 2023 4:05 PM

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saynotobadtech Author

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Oct 17, 2023 2:58 PM

Update 10/17/2023: I've been in contact with Apple Support and my conversations with them confirm my suspicisons: there is a bug (either accidental or intentional) in iOS 17 that affects only users who previously had their voicemail service turned off. My voicemail service was previously turned off per my request by my carrier about 14 years ago. As a result, I had no voicemail service on my phone. When iOS 17 came on with "LiveVoicemail", iOS 17 turned on my voicemail service by default. When iOS 17 turned on my voicemail in my iPhone, it also turned on the voicemail recording/greeting/message. Since I didn't have any previous "custom" greeting, iOS 17 chose the default greeting by default. This did not affect customers who had current voicemail service on their phones. It only affected those who didn't. Why? In order to "shock and awe" the world with the AI-assisted "LiveVoicemail" feature, Apple forced that feature onto everyone, including those who had their voicemail service turned off. In order to make this PR campaign for LiveVoicemail to work, Apple told those phones to turn on their voicemail services even if the voicemail service was off before the update! Ironically, while I was trying to clean up Apple's mess, I got a sampling of their "LiveVoicemail". It was from a medical office. Oh my god. It was terrible! Errors, omissions, misspellings, etc. That's equivalent to medical malpractice. Anyway, the only way you can fix this is to: disable LiveVoicemail and contact your carrier to "reset" your entire voicemail service to ensure that everything stays off. This was a bleep for me to fix and I shouldn't have had to do it in the first place! I'm not a fan of AI. Just watch YouTube videos or even regular television programming with closed-captioning and you'll see why. Folks don't understand that closed-captioning has been around since the late 1970's and it's still not 100% today!!! And folks think that AI can do a better job? LiveVoicemail is a joke. I'm not using that function, ever. This topic is closed as far as I am concerned because it's "split milk". It's done. I'm just glad I was able to fix it and disable the LiveVoicemail feature for good.

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iOS 17 screwed up my voicemail

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