Help Mandatory Visual Voicemail Update Installs Nagware

[AmericanHero]

Now every time I listen to a new voicemail message I have a subscribe button and a count down timer telling me how many free trial days I have left. I spent an hour on the phone with sprint and they finally told me I had to subscribe to the service or wait 30 days to get rid of there advertisement. What a bunch of BS. I know it seems petty, but should sprint be able to force feed you services like this?

 

[sitlet]

I cant stand being forced to look ad advertising with programs we are already forced to use. Verizon's Incredible has a similar situation, which I found out when my girlfriend got one. They have a trial of a caller id app, and EVERY SINGLE TIME you hang up from a call, you get a full screen popup telling you to subscribe, or continue the trial. It was a protected app, so there was no way to remove it without rooting.

This voicemail thing annoyed me as well. I just hit the subscribe button to stop the annoying messages. If they charge me for it, I'll call and complain.

 

[akazabam]

Are you particularly attached to using sprint voicemail? You can use an alternative like google voice - no ads, and it integrates into android quite well.

 

[RTan]

For your information, this "Subscribe to Voicemail-to-Text" button will not go away even though the Trial has expired. It will be there for good until you subscribe to the service. Tapping on this button accidentally will not trigger the subscription. It just pops up a dialog window showing you the pricing information. If you tap on the "Subscribe" button in this popped up window, then the service will be subscribed.

 

[AmericanHero]

Are you particularly attached to using sprint voicemail? You can use an alternative like google voice - no ads, and it integrates into android quite well.

I Thought this only uses the google phone number, not my Sprint number. Is this the case or can I check my Sprint voice mail with this?

 

[akazabam]

I Thought this only uses the google phone number, not my Sprint number. Is this the case or can I check my Sprint voice mail with this?

Yes and no. I'll start by saying that if you have voicemails you want to keep on sprint voicemail, you'd need to find a way to save them before using google voice. If you use google voice, you will no way be using sprint voicemail.

There are two ways to use google voice. One is to have a google voice number that forwards your calls to one or more actual phones. When calls aren't answered to that number, they go to your google voice voicemail, which is a shared inbox that all your forwarding phones can access. The second way you can use it is as a voicemail replacement, which is what you'd want to do. Bascally, it uses the same shared inbox, but you forward your missed calls to your google voice number instead of your sprint voicemail. What that means is, when someone calls your actuall cell phone, and you either have a missed call or just send it to voicemail, it will go straight to your google voice voicemail. To the caller it makes no difference. They don't know they were sent to your google voice voicemail instead of sprint voicemail. The nice thing is that you can use both of these methods at the same time, if you like, or just one or the other. I use it as a straight up voicemail replacement, but I have used it for the google voice phone number in the past. It's nice because you can still use it like normal voicemail by dialing 1, you can use it like sprint visual voicemail with the google voice app, where you see your messages in an inbox (and transcription, while pretty bad, is free). The benefit is that you can customize quite a bit from the web interface, where you can also see your messages. And, since we're talking about android here, it integrates into the system quite nicely.

 

[mslisaj]

Yes I got stung today by this mandatory update. Spent 40 minutes on the phone and the tech never heard of the problem. My phone was rooted so I went back to a previous version and then there was a nagging notification icon left that wouldn't leave my screen. Push the button and it downloads the program. After reading all this at least I know that it should go away in 30 days. God I thought this was my phone but they certainly have control.