How to disable T-Mobile voicemail for a better Google Voice experience on the LG Nexus 4
Although I’m a huge fan of T-Mobile’s $30 “unlimited” data/100 minutes no-contract smartphone data plan, I’m not such a huge fan of T-Mobile’s voice mail service. I’ve used Google Voice for quite a while, and it is the only number that I give out to people. As such, all my voice mails are in Google Voice, something that I prefer to traditional voice mail services. However, a small annoyance when using Google Voice on my LG Nexus 4 with T-Mobile is that even when the actual voice mails go to Google voice, I end up with “voice mails” on T-Mobile’s service that, oddly enough, are recordings of Google Voice saying “The Google Voice subscriber you have called is not available.”
This results in a nearly constant voice mail notification, and a voice mail box filled with identical worthless voice mails. Fortunately, there is a very easy solution for this. If you really don’t need T-Mobile’s voice mail service and use only Google Voice, you can call 611 from your T-Mobile phone, ask for a representative, and tell them to disable T-Mobile voice mail service on your line. It should be fairly straightforward when you call, but you will get an automated response at first. Simply say “service representative” and you should be transferred. From there, you can simply ask the representative to turn off or disable your voice mail, and should need to provide only your PIN.
I called just this morning, and it took no more than five minutes for the representative to process my request. It hasn’t been too long, but since then I haven’t gotten any more T-Mobile voice mails, although I have gotten messages in Google Voice. With my Galaxy Nexus, I used to just deal with the constant voice mail notification. Now that I know how easy it is to solve the problem, my experience with the Nexus 4 and Google Voice will be just that much better.
