ATT or iPhone deleted all Visual Voice messages!? Anyone else??

Question

Has this happened to anyone yet??
I had 7 saved voicemail messages and received 2 new ones the other night. I had company over, so I waited until they left to check them. I noticed the Red Circle with the #2 was gone, but didn't think anything of it. When I went to my voicemail screen it prompted me to setup my voicemail!? I couldn't retrieve any messages until I did this (Yes, I already set this up 5 days earlier).
After redoing my voicemail greeting, non of my messages were there, neither the 7 saved nor the 2 new ones. I am not sure if this is a software glitch (Apple issue) or voicemail service (ATT issue).
I ran a couple tests to see what happens with voicemail when I want to delete. So, I used my other phone to add 3 new messages to my iPhone. After checking my messages with the new Visual Voicemail, I accessed my messages the old fashioned way (If you go to Keypad and press and hold the '1' key, you can go to the old voicemail system). All 3 messages were there.
I saved 2 of the messages and deleted 1. After returning to my iPhone Visual Voicemail the deleted voicemail was gone and the other 2 remained.
In the Visual Voicemail I deleted 1 of the remaining 2. The iPhone puts this deleted message into a deleted folder where it can be recovered. Before I cleared the deleted folder, I went back to the old voicemail and it was still there. So I went back to the iPhone deleted folder and pressed clear all. After this, the message was cleared from the old message system.
So either ATT wiped out all my messages as well as my Outgoing message or there might be a glitch in the Apple software that deleted everything on the iPhone, which in turn would delete everything from the old voicemail system.
I know this is long, and thankfully I didn't have anything that was critically important in the deleted messages, but if this happens to anyone else, it is best to report to Apple and ATT so this doesn't become a problem.
I sent an email to Apple with the suggestion of a box for saving messages to a folder that is separate from the voicemail service and can't be accidently deleted by ATT or the Apple Visual Voicemail.
Narvon
PS I had a fully charged iPhone when this happened and I have never gone below %15 remaining charge. Also, I have never had to do a hard reset of the iPhone.
Quad 2.5, 6600, 4GB ram   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

Page 30 of iPhone User Guide:
"Once you listen to a message, it is saved for 30
days from the time you listened to it."
That is a good point.
However, if you are trying to let us know that this is why we lost our messages, you have forgotten that the iPhone has only been available for 18 days. We are still 12 days short of the auto 30 day deletion.
Others, including myself, have lost our entire voicemail account and have had to redo our message greeting.
The point is that there is a flaw and I don't want to lose anymore messages. I don't always have the time to input #'s, addresses, etc., so I save the message for later. If messages are going to be deleted without my doing, then I cannot trust ATT or Apple with this.
Apple at least has told me to alert them if this happens again. ATT denies anything on their end.
Narvon
Quad 2.5, 6600, 4GB ram   Mac OS X (10.4.8)