Verizon gets official with Visual Voicemail service
By Donald Melanson 
posted Aug 11th 2008 12:31PM
posted Aug 11th 2008 12:31PM
There aren't exactly all that many details left to announce, but Verizon has just gotten official with its late to the party Visual Voicemail service which, for the time being at least, is only available on the LG Voyager. As we had heard previously, the service will run you an extra $2.99 per month on top of your usual bill, and you'll be able to store up to 40 messages for 40 days, with an option to create up to 10 greetings and 20 distribution lists. Unfortunately, Verizon didn't take the opportunity to announce any firm plans for a roll-out to any of the other phones supposedly in line to get the service, with it only going so far as to say that additional devices will be getting it in the "coming months."
As a Verizon customer I was very much looking forward to finally getting visual voicemail on my Voyager. However, after conflicting statements of the service being free and $2.99 a month, and seeing Verizon settle on it's typical 'nickel-and-dime' method of pricing, I am severely disappointed. I don't care if Verizon's program is slightly more robust than the others -- I shouldn't have to pay $36 a year for something that is offered for free on other networks.
No, I'm not switching from Verizon anytime soon ... in fact, I love their service and phones. This, however is not one feature that I will be utilizing, until Verizon makes it more palatable for me to want it.
Why must Verizon charge for every little thing. I can't wait 'til my contract is up.
Ummmm...
$2.99 per month? That BS. I'll continue to stick with the 100% completely free YouMail service until Verizon decides to pull its head out of its ass.
"More robust" my ass...
$2.99 per month but... you can download the program for FREE!
Seriously, Its Verizon. I'm surprised they dont have a 'visual voicemail activation fee' as well.
Thats too bad really. I was looking forward to getting it on my new VZ phone.
Dear Verizon,
It has come to many consumers attention that your pricing of products is asinine. The products your company is charging for, are "free" on other carriers, or are included in many select rate plans.
Verizon has made claim after claim to have the "most reliable" network, and "largest data coverage" of any provider in the USA. This is a claim that I have failed personally to see, as many times I would lose service, when other carriers would still continue in digital coverage.
Charging customers more for so called better coverage that in reality is lacking, is not my way of doing business.
At no point have I ever seen Verizon Wireless offer "more robust" features then any other carrier, additionally, the additional features are all at a cost, but look like they were designed and built by PlaySkool.
Sorry Verizon, this is one former customer you will never gain back. My advise to you is to buy back your Voda stake, and take after T-Mobile in prices and customer service, Sprint in innovation and bundles, and AT&T in marketing.
Have a fantastic day.
ROGER A.
I was hoping this was going to be free... guess not, oh well. I've been extremely happy with my YouMail so I'll live.
You guys are crazy. There is a reason why verizon is the most profitable and stable wireless carrier with the best network. If you want a premium service, then skip that cup of starbucks one day a month and BAM!!! you just paid for your visuall voicemail. Plus if you get a lot of voicemails, this could save you a ton of time, which is also worth $3/month.
Verizon shouldn't give away everything for free. This is a great service, and $3 is a fair price. And I'll bet any of you that att will soon be charging for any visual voicemail service they offer.
Get off your high horses and realize that cell companies are business TO MAKE MONEY. Not give everything away. You want to know what happens when you give away the farm? Take a look at Sprints recent numbers....
cwcanty
um....you have to pay for a $30/month data plan to get VVM "free" with the iphone and be on the 99.99 simply everything plan to get VVM "free" with the instinct....that's not exactly free. While I agree, it would be nice to get VVM at no cost, at least you can get it on a basic plan with VZW even if you do have to pay $2.99 for it.
went down to verizon today and got my phone upgraded and they told me it could take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours and may or may not delete all my information. mine only took a little more then an hour and i have backup assistant and everything on my microsd but nothing got deleted anyway. the visual voicemail still does not work still but there is an updated interface its more dare mated with env2 and now they tell you where the person is "calling from". but the in store customer service was great but dont bother calling 611 they have no clue what they are doing. im not mad that this system isnt working it is the debut day after all and i still didnt have as many problems as users on iphone 3g launch day.
Glenn dial *228 and then select option 1 and it should work fine i had an error code with mine and i found out on the website voyager-lg.com that if you do the *228 it works and it did for mine. also the visual voice mail looks nothing at all like the picture they show also i dont know if this was mentioned on the voyager refresh but you can just start typing on the qwerty keyboard and it wil make a new text message as well as you can type the persons name in the new txt message box and their number will come right up