No iPhone Visual Voicemail with Tracfone and No Voicemail Notifications

A reader Sue, writes…

Hi Bob,
Your site is very helpful! Thank you! I sold an old phone to a friend and when she activated it, Tracfone gave her a new number, added her to my account and kicked my phone off! After 2 very long days with customer service, it seems to be working. Everything except VM. I have to dial in to get it when I used to get notifications and had Visual VM. It seems to have been lost when they made me download a new APN number thru iphone.flexserve.net. Any advice? I have an iPhone 7plus.
Thank you so much!

Hi Sue,
Thanks for reading smartphonematters. Sorry to hear about the two long days, I’ve heard that story before and it is never pleasant.

While the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail sometimes works with the different Tracfone brands, they do not seem to officially support it. In my experience customers using the iPhone with Tracfone’s Verizon towers will sometimes find that they have Visual Voicemail instead of regular voice mail like customers using Tracfone’s ATT or T-Mobile towers. Also it seems maybe a year ago or so, there were some updates to iOS and the iPhone’s “carrier update’s” for Tracfone that when installed would cause Visual Voicemail to be replaced with regular voicemail.

I am not aware of anything you can do to restore Visual Voicemail. A number of my readers have contacted Tracfone customer service only to be told.. “Tracfone does not support Visual Voicemail”.

Now for your second issue, not getting notifications for regular voicemail. I have had a number of readers with that problem and their is something you can try to see if this helps, see Not Receiving Straight Talk Voicemail Notifications on My iPhone. Even though the article is about Straight Talk, it is the same for Tracfone, both are owned by the same company.

On a related note, I’m a little concerned that Tracfone had you install an APN carrier profile from iphone.flexserve.net. You might install an APN from that site if you had a “Could Not Activate Cellular Data Network” message. Typically you need to install one of these to set the APN so you can use cellular data, but with the latest version of iOS and the latest “carrier update” your phone should work properly with out needing the carrier profile.

I’m assuming that both your previous phone and current iPhone are using Tracfone’s Verizon towers and not their AT&T or T-Mobile towers.

If you are still using Tracfone’s Verizon towers there is a chance that removing the profile and making sure your “carrier updates” are installed will restore visual voicemail. To do this, you’d need to go into your iPhone’s Settings > General while connected to the internet (Wi-Fi or cell data) and see if your phone prompts you to install a carrier update. If so, you’d install the update and then delete the carrier profile from your phone. To see how to delete the carrier profile, see this video iPhone Unable to Use Cellular Data With a New Carrier Could Not Activate Cellular Data Network

All this is a bit easier than it sounds. Give it a try if you like or feel free to ask more questions.

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