Does your wireless carrier charge to retrieve voicemails?

[WirelessBeachBum]

Verizon does charge to retrieve voice mails from your wireless phone.

One carrier (Hargray Wireless) would actually charge airtime for customers prepay accounts when someone would leave a message.

I just wanted to start this thread to see what other carriers are doing.

[ComicalMoodyDan]

Calls from my wireless phone to my voicemail are rated as MTM calls. Since I have unlimited MTM on my plan I am not charged for checking my voicemail.

[dallison]

att does not charge for m-m as long as you bhave free m-m and you are on the network, if they are off network they will get charged airtime

if customers don't have m-m it will go against their minutes

[Matt]

Originally Posted by dallison

att does not charge for m-m as long as you bhave free m-m and you are on the network, if they are off network they will get charged airtime

if customers don't have m-m it will go against their minutes

Same for T-Mobile. It's airtime unless you have m2m.

[ShoresGuy]

My German provider E-Plus charges prepaid subscribers and lower level contract users for checking voicemail. This is the case with Vodafone UK and most other major European providers. There are exceptions like Virgin Mobile UK where you can check VM for free as long as your card has credit. But most business and professional contracts offered by European providers allow you to check VM for free.

[MOTOhooligan]

With CellularONE (Western Wireless) if you don't have Enhanced VM ($2.99 with plans below $75 and free with plans $75 or higher) which gives you free VM retrievals or you don't have M2M included in your plan you are charged minutes to retrieve your VM. If you have a bucket of M2M minutes you are not charged to check your VM as those calls are rated as M2M.

[Jodi]

As originally posted, VZW does use airtime to retrieve VMXs. I go around it whenever I can by calling in on a landline. Then I'm not charged the minutes.

[Airb330]

Originally Posted by WirelessBeachBum

Verizon does charge to retrieve voice mails from your wireless phone.

One carrier (Hargray Wireless) would actually charge airtime for customers prepay accounts when someone would leave a message.

I just wanted to start this thread to see what other carriers are doing.

Thats how Verizon's prepay was. It really sucked, otherwise FREEUP rocked. Free weekend minutes in 2001!

Cingular counts VM as M2M. I know Verizon did for a while, then changed it

[larry]

As far as I know Sprint treats it the same way as Verizon even if you have MTM. That's why I use a landline to check when possible to save anytime minutes (unless of course it's after 8PM or on weekends when it wouldn't matter anyway).

[Quint101]

I know that on ALLTEL's prepay system, voicemail deposits and retrievals go against your minutes; On the ATT Gophone, mins are reduced only when calling v-mail from the cell. It helps I have unlimited nights and weekends

[Andy]

VZW does charge airtime, but I always use backdoor voicemail numbers during the day which are billed "IN" and since I have Free IN Calling it's free.

[NFrabbit]

CellularOne (Dobson) does not charge to retrieve voicemal as long as you are in your home or extended area.

[bobolito]

Cingular does the same thing as the other GSM carriers. Calls from your wireless phone to your voicemail system are rated as M2M as long as you have M2M in your account. If you don't have M2M, then it comes out of your minutes (Daytime or N&W).

[MOTOhooligan]

Originally Posted by Quint101

I know that on ALLTEL's prepay system, voicemail deposits and retrievals go against your minutes

Wow, when someone leaves you a VM it takes away from your minutes. That sucks.

[roamer1]

Originally Posted by rancidhooligan

Wow, when someone leaves you a VM it takes away from your minutes. That sucks.

VZW/Airtouch used to have a rather unusual charging policy for vmail in Atlanta, Ohio, and Michigan -- no charge to retrieve vm from cell in home area but charges (in some cases airtime, in other cases "voicemail usage" charges of 15c/min) applied to vm deposits and vm retrievals from landlines or other cell phones or from cell when roaming. This went away and changed to the usual billing method here in Atlanta fairly quickly after Airtouch became VZW, as Atlanta was moved to a different billing system, but the practice continued in OH/MI (except on National SingleRate and later America's Choice plans, IIRC) for at least a couple more years.

Charging for vm deposits on TDMA and CDMA prepaid plans remains rather common, mostly for fairly technical reasons relating to how prepaid calls are routed in ANSI-41 networks (specifically, prepaid calls tend to be routed through third-party platforms that are relatively "dumb" and charge for any call that returns answer supervision, except for 611/911/etc. calls.)

-SC

[Fire14]

If AWE charged for getting VM I would never get my messages & I would want the option to turn it off & if i did leave it on the only way i would check my messages would be from a landline. It is sad that companies charge your anytime mins to get your VM's.