Using Google Voice for voicemail with T-Mobile prepaid

[dirtyjudo]

Hi. Is there a tutorial floating around for using Google voice for voicemail with the N5 and T-Mobile prepaid? Right now it's defaulting to T-Mobile voicemail.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[essinger]

You can ask T-Mobile to disable their voicemail. I was able to do it through chat support. Then voicemail is always through GV.
EDIT: This assumes you have a separate GV # and are forwarding to T-Mobile.

 

[ccrs8]

Months ago when I was thinking of switching to T-Mobile from Sprint, I was looking at the T-Mobile pre-paid plans. With Sprint I used Google Voice just for voicemail (sometimes called "Google Voice Lite"). During this research, I discovered that T-Mobile prepaid plans didn't do conditional call forwarding, which is required for Google Voice Lite. That may have changed since I did this research, but this could be your problem. I have regular postpaid T-Mobile and Google Voice Lite works fine.

 

[dirtyjudo]

I think that's still the case. Thanks

 

[zkSharks]

You can ask T-Mobile to disable their voicemail. I was able to do it through chat support. Then voicemail is always through GV.
EDIT: This assumes you have a separate GV # and are forwarding to T-Mobile.

This is correct. If you use the standalone Google Voice number and forward calls to your T-Mobile prepaid line, you can use Voice for voicemail by disabling the T-Mobile voicemail feature altogether. Any calls coming through your Voice number will be picked up by the Voice voicemail if one of the forwarding lines does not answer the call in a set amount of time. Unfortunately, if one of the forwarding lines goes to voicemail, this counts as 'answering' the call.

Months ago when I was thinking of switching to T-Mobile from Sprint, I was looking at the T-Mobile pre-paid plans. With Sprint I used Google Voice just for voicemail (sometimes called "Google Voice Lite"). During this research, I discovered that T-Mobile prepaid plans didn't do conditional call forwarding, which is required for Google Voice Lite. That may have changed since I did this research, but this could be your problem. I have regular postpaid T-Mobile and Google Voice Lite works fine.

Also correct; it hasn't changed. :-\

 

[dazzer87]

Hi. Is there a tutorial floating around for using Google voice for voicemail with the N5 and T-Mobile prepaid? Right now it's defaulting to T-Mobile voicemail.

Posted via Android Central App

Why not use tmo visual voicemail app to check your voicemail. It will not eat into your minutes

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[glc650]

This is correct. If you use the standalone Google Voice number and forward calls to your T-Mobile prepaid line, you can use Voice for voicemail by disabling the T-Mobile voicemail feature altogether. Any calls coming through your Voice number will be picked up by the Voice voicemail if one of the forwarding lines does not answer the call in a set amount of time. Unfortunately, if one of the forwarding lines goes to voicemail, this counts as 'answering' the call.

I also have a T-Mobile prepaid plan. My T-Mobile number is one of my forwarding phones in GV and when I tried to Activate Google voicemail on it it failed because of Conditional Call Forwarding not being supported by T-Mobile prepaid accounts. Are you saying that if I have T-Mobile disable my voicemail with them (even though I haven't even set it up yet) then I won't need to worry about Conditional Call Forwarding support (or lack thereof on the prepaid plans)?

 

[zkSharks]

I also have a T-Mobile prepaid plan. My T-Mobile number is one of my forwarding phones in GV and when I tried to Activate Google voicemail on it it failed because of Conditional Call Forwarding not being supported by T-Mobile prepaid accounts. Are you saying that if I have T-Mobile disable my voicemail with them (even though I haven't even set it up yet) then I won't need to worry about Conditional Call Forwarding support (or lack thereof on the prepaid plans)?

Yep, that's exactly right. Disabling the voicemail feature on a line, even prepaid, is a fairly common request (from those traveling out of the country, for example). Once disabled, if you call the number directly, it should just continue ringing until the call is either answered or declined. This is what allows Voice to hit the timeout that triggers its own voicemail. I haven't tested this since T-Mobile's most recent (and minor) changes to its prepaid lines, but I'm fairly sure it's still viable.

 

[Roger Ecks]

I found this tonight and I can confirm that Patrick's solution works perfectly. I had t-mobile disable my voice mail yesterday but my calls were still being routed to t-mobile vm. Tonight I found this thread and noticed that I also needed to delete all all of the call forwarding nonsense in the phone dialer Settings>Call Forwarding>Always Forward>Disabled. Once I did that my callers were routed to Google Voice VM. My phone is working like it used to again, thank you!

 

[Brett Longworth]

I just tried disabing T-Mobile voicemail via chat. I now get a message saying "the subscriber you have dialed is not available" when dialing the t-mobile line. IE, t-mobile picks up before the call goes to GV voicemail. Am I missing something here? I don't have cell coverage where I am now, so that could have something to do with it.

 

[ChromeJob]

The answer to the perennial question, "why use GV when you have T-mo visual voice mail," ... is that you can check your GV mailbox from any device: cell phone, Wi-fi tablet, even an iPod. In fact, speech to text transcription happens must faster on the iOS app, and messages play back without halting or downloading on iOS.

Bottom line: it's much more convenient to check your voice mail on any of your devices.