Straight Talk iPhone 5, after the iOS 7 update, visual voicemail is gone. I tried restoring, resetting the net work settings, called the carrier and had them try to rest the voicemail, none has worked. Now what?

FWIW, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1937?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US indicates that Straight Talk does support VVM ... as of 12 Mar 2014 anyway.

Yeah, I guess they support it if it happens to work, but not if it doesn't 😕

I gave up on ST and finally went with Aio, soon to be called Cricket. Although ST did EVERYTHING they possibly could to mess up the porting of my number, and gave a different story about it every time I or Aio called, it finally got sorted out. VVM works fine.

I tried using Straight Talk's online chat customer support, three times today. All three representatives told me that Straight Talk doesn't support visual voicemail. When I reminded each of them that that may have been the case in the past, but Apple now clearly shows that Straight Talk does, in fact, support visual voicemail (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1937?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US), two of them abruptly hung up on me; the third told me to call Straight Talk customer service.

So I called Straight Talk customer service. The rep reset my voicemail on her end. It didn't solve the problem. She told me the problem was that I used to be a Verizon customer, and Verizon has set my phone to access visual voicemail only through Verizon, not Straight Talk. She said I need to call Verizon, and ask them to change the settings on my phone, so that I can access visual voicemail from Straight Talk. I asked to speak to a supervisor or tech support for a second opinion. She said she was a supervisor, and anyone else with whom I spoke would give me the same answer.

I said goodbye and called Verizon. I explained the situation. They said that because I am no longer a Verizon customer, they can't help me.

I have a Verizon iPhone 4S running iOS 7.1.1. Is it possible to get visual voicemail to work on it or not, now that Apple claims that Straight Talk supports it? I tried resetting network settings and installing the APN (as previous users suggested), but neither of those suggestions helped. I'm using Google Voice voicemail, in the meantime, which is ok, but I'd much prefer Apple's native visual voicemail, if possible.

When I search for "iPhone visual voicemail" on Straight Talk's support forums (https://www.straighttalkwirelessforum.com/search.php?keywords=iphone+visual+voic email), I see tons of posts. Virtually every one of them is responded to by a Straight Talk rep, asking them to discuss the matter in a private chat, or saying they sent the user a private message. I wonder whether these reps are helping customers fix the problem, or are just telling the customers that it's not possible, without having to embarass the company by stating it publicly. Anyone know? Perhaps I'll have to post there myself, to find out.

By the way, for what it's worth, when I spoke to a Straight Talk rep about 2 or 3 months ago, they told me that visual voicemail would be coming within a month or two. I wonder if there was any truth to this, or they were just talking out of their a**, as so often seems to happen with Straight Talk customer representatives.

Finally, one of the more interesting posts on the Straight Talk support forum (at https://www.straighttalkwirelessforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6803&t=710657&p=155422 7&hilit=iphone+visual+voicemail#p1554227) says this:

The thing is that their proprietary iphones support visual voicemail but they will not update the voicemail server to enable the feature. I have spent all day talking to customer support (if you want to call it that) and Apple. According to apple, visual voicemail would automatically work if they had the server updated to the iOS 7.x functions. This is what the customer service person from ST said:

"This is not applicable to the Bring Your Own Phone program. Please be advised that our SIM card will not recognize the type of phone model you are using. You can switch the SIM card to any compatible GSM phone. We are using the same programming to all of the SIM cards under Bring Your Own Phone program regardless of the phone model. There's no capability for our SIM cards to customize your phone's additional feature."

Is it too much to ask for a server update? I think not....

Can anyone corroborate this statement? If so, does anyone have any ideas as to how we can get Straight Talk for a server update?

I eventually switched to Aio, now Cricket, and visual voicemail works fine. Straight Talk customer service is horrible. I gave up dealing with them.

ST is so full of BS. Apple shows they are a supported carrier, namely because they use T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T towers. Apple programs the "carrier settings", into the OS, which includes the VVM interface and allows for basic VM setup.

The SIM and the phone only matter, when the phone doesn't support VVM and the SIM is not "provisioned" for it, meaning STs billing system does not show to have the feature enabled, on your account. As an AT&T Tech Support rep, I can confirm, that we remove the VVM as part of VVM troubleshooting, and it doesn't require a new SIM card.

This is nothing more, than a classic case of "You get what you pay for". This is why I do not have ST for my provider, despite them being cheaper per month than AT&T and offer unlimited data. AT&T shows ownership, of my issues, when I call in.

FYI, the type of software, for the major carriers billing systems are standardized, meaning it is identical software as the type I use. Now, ST is a pre-pay type service, if I recall. For the agents to change your VM profile for adding VVM would likely mean they would have to change your billing profile. With a pre-pay account, they would have to issue a prorated or full credit to your account, so the new feature could be added and the old.provisioning would expire. It is different than a postpaid account where a feature change like that would generate a prorated charges and credit, that would zero out on your next bill. So, Wal-Mart just doesn't want to pony up the dough, if that is the case.

The only other thing I can think of, that you may have to do, would be to create a backup in iTunes. Then restore your device as new, from iTunes. When AT&T customers perform a wireless number change, we usually have to have them sync with iTunes to get their VVM box running again. Probably another iOS 7 bug, that Apple will hopefully correct with next update and/or next OS release.

I toggled my 'cellular data' function on and off and then restarted the phone and it cured the problem. I have a 4S.

Thanks, QuantLvr. I'm glad you got it to work. I have a few questions for you:

1. Who is your carrier? Straight Talk?

2. Assuming your carrier is Straight Talk, which network does your phone use? For example, does it use Verizon's network? As you may know, Straight Talk uses various networks. An iPhone that was originally designed for Verizon's network, for example, will use Verizon's network, when Straight Talk is its carrier.

3. Could you please lay out the steps you took, one by one by one? For example, was your cellular data disabled to start, and then you turned it on, and then you turned it off? Or did you turn it off, then on, then off, then restarted the phone, etc.? I hope I don't sound nitpicky; I just want to be able to reproduce the steps you took exactly.

Hi Moscovit:

My network is ATT. I turned 'cellular data' off for a two-week holiday in the UK. I received the 'visual email not available' message when I returned. I read the posts here about the issue and did the following: 1) toggled 'cellular data' on and off - no change; 2) toggled 'cellular data' on and then restarted the phone and voice mail worked fine.

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I am now updated to iOS 8.0.2, on my Straight Talk Bring-Your-Own-Phone iPhone 4S (previously a Verizon phone).

Visual Voicemail still doesn't work, even after following all of the steps at http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4430?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Has anyone who's updated to iOS 8 gotten visual voicemail to work on their Straight Talk Bring-Your-Own-Phone iPhones?

This discussion was the 5th or 6th one in my hunt for a solution to this problem. The top hit in my search was a Cnet article that discussed using Google Voice or YouMail as a work around. According to the article setting up Google Voice was more complicated and a few commenters said Youmail was easy to setup so I went with that. Setup was easy and I am testing it now...

Unable to get Visual Voicemail working on my (full price, unlocked) iphone 5s (iOS 8.3) with Straight Talk.

I called ST support several times, even asking for supervisor assistance. They repeatedly denied they support this feature, despite it being listed at

Wireless carrier support and features for iPhone in the United States and Canada - Apple Support

I checked Settings>General

I do not have a "change APN" option at this point, so not seeing how you were able to get this to work.

Thanks for all the support with this issue.

PS The same Apple page above also lists ST support for Personal Hotspot. I was also told on multiple chats with support they do not support this feature. However, they do not seem to disable the feature on Android phones. My son successfully uses this feature all the time that way.

Thank you so much for this easy to understand explanation! Makes total sense! Explains why I get the error message from my iphone5s "Failed to fetch your vm greeting from the server" every time I try to customize my greeting. No server connection! I tried on my wifi and with wifi off and on ST service. ST *****! I've used them for a couple years now with no problems until now. Can't believe they won't update their server to sync with ios7 VVM. I guess that's what you get from a second rate service company that doesn't have the tech support and relies on the other big companies' service.