Crazy voicemail situation

[Amethyst]

Anybody ever had this happen?

I have a Moto G3 smartphone, and until recently, did not use it much except for emails and texts. I bought it directly from the factory, had TING wireless on it for a while, then switched to ATT prepaid when we started traveling places TING did not support.

Now that I am in a "new" (actually old) house that needs work, I need voicemail and can't get it. The phone's instructions say to go through your carrier. ATT technical support were able to set up voicemail, but I can't access it!

The tech support person said, after trying this and that "Well, it must be because you didn't buy the phone from ATT, and you ported your number over from another carrier [TING] so your phone is not compatible." Almost like a "So there! Just what you deserve."

So now contractors are leaving me voicemails that I can't listen to.

I would hate to throw away this phone and start over. It's a perfectly nice phone and I'm frugal!

 

[braumeister]

You should be able to access your voicemail from any phone.
Look at the ATT help page and there should be instructions.

 

[Amethyst]

I called tech support because the instructions weren't working.

You should be able to access your voicemail from any phone.
Look at the ATT help page and there should be instructions.

 

[Jerry1]

A pain, but can you forward the voice mails to yourself in a text message?

 

[folivier]

Look into google voicemail.

 

[target2019]

I believe you must activate voice mail in the phone itself. I had to do that with my Pixel when it replaced iPhone. It probably has something to do with permissions on the phone itself.

 

[Amethyst]

I finally got it to work! One issue is that the "voicemail" icon leads to a screen that says "SMS Assistance." Weird, huh? Also, before actually getting to my voicemail, I have to listen to a mechanical voice read a looong spiel about their new service for recovering deleted voicemail. I haven't found a button that cuts off this spiel and lets me move on to the mail.
So...highly inconvenient, but at least I could listen to my messages.