Sun Cellular voicemail not directing unanswered calls to voicemail, only works with Call Divert [Update: Solved]

I recently got voicemail activated for my Sun Cellular line. It took a couple of phone calls to Customer Care, but it’s functional now.

When I decided to give the service a spin by calling my phone from my mom’s phone, however, I discovered that calls made to me when my phone is off or when I can’t pick up the call doesn’t go to voicemail; instead, the call simply drops. Voicemail only works when Call Divert is activated and calls are set to divert to the voicemail number (211).

I expected unanswered calls to go to voicemail automatically, regardless of whether Call Divert is turned on. With the current setup, voicemail is rendered next to useless. When I’m very busy and can’t take calls, I simply turn off my phone, not activate Call Divert. I want those calls to go to voicemail while my phone’s off or when I leave it unattended.

Does Sun Cellular’s voicemail service really only work when Call Divert is turned on? Doesn’t it send unanswered calls to voicemail automatically? Or am I the only one experiencing this?

UPDATE 01/23

I did some googling and found a solution to the voicemail conundrum: global voicemail shortcodes. Basically, they’re codes you dial on your phone that changes the phone’s internal settings and dictates how it should divert calls. The list of global voicemail shortcodes can be found here.

It’s still not a satisfactory solution for me, though. Why? When someone calls me and is directed to voicemail—say for example when I reject the call—it doesn’t play my voicemail greeting directly; instead, the voice prompt that says “The subscriber you are calling is busy at the moment…” is played, a brief pause is heard, and only then does my greeting follow. This is problematic because the caller is likely to hang up before my greeting is played, so nobody leaves me any messages. At most, all I receive is an SMS telling me that someone tried to call me, was directed to voicemail, and didn’t leave a message. What I would like to happen is for the system to skip the voice prompt (e.g. “the subscriber you are calling is busy at the moment”) and go directly to my voicemail greeting. If I remember correctly, this is what Smart Telecom’s voicemail service does. (Last time I used Smart’s voicemail was about four years ago, though, so…)

I hope this information gets through to someone from Sun Cellular. In the meantime, though, the shortcodes are a Sun Cel user’s best bet.