Cant send texts or hook up to visual voice mail. verizon ignores and is useless

Question

A few weeks ago I had my texts stop sending out and my visual voicemail wouldn't connect, well  I contacted Verizon and tried to get it fixed. after a long try at uninstalling this and updating that. I did a full factory reset of my phone.. painful. still nothing .  So technical support filled out a ticket??? don't know what a ticket is but apparently it lets your problem be looked at by some super elite magical tech. but I cant help me for over 24 hrs. on a mon. finally after a day and a half I get a call from this elite tec.. but hes in a hurry cause he wants to go home its quittin time for him. so I tell him I cant txt. he said hell call me right back. 3 min later txt work . he calls to confirm. all good. life is good  for one hour. then the same problem .. I call the next day and after a lengthy phone explanation again. he says the networks down. ive asked all my friends with Verizon im the only one with a problem. LIAR! I call back and do the phone dance and explination. all so the tech can tell me his computers down, hell call me back.. OK I wait and get NO CALL BACK. so I call Verizon the next day. and do the phone dance again explain my story to another person. and my phone disconnect. they didn't bother to call me back. so again the next day  I call again. do the whole f****ing dance and explain thing again. so this time they fill out another ticket. so I can see the super tech wizard and maybe get to text someday.  Sooooo I wait TWO DAYS.  no call.. I call them back. finally upset and bothered they put me thru to a the 3 tier tech wizard immeadietly.    OMG I thought I needed a ticket to talk to these magical wizards??? Guess not. well he goes through figures out  its not my phone.  But isn't magicl enough to figure it out. say hell call back. THAT WAS TWO DAYS AGO.  still waiting!!! ive been on the phone with tech support for approximately 9.5 hours BEEN LIED TO AND HUNG UP ON. and I kept my cool until the end. ive been a subscriber for 10 years to be treated like this. im going to try 1 more time then ill find every forum, blog, Social media site I can. and spread the word on  "THE NETWORK" ill become obsessive until my ripple is felt.

Answer 1

No, I did not have the cellular data connection turned off during the time I was not receiving the notifications and yes, the notifications were turn on in my voicemail settings.  The issue did not occur until after the 3.04 update was installed.
Last month I started having issues with the touch screen on my Galaxy Note 3. Verizon Technical Support sent me a replacement Galaxy Note 3 last week which I received today and I did some testing on the new phone and here is what I found. With the 3.01 version of Verizon's Visual Voice Mail I receive notifications right away when I receive a voice message. When I say right away it's within 5 minutes. After the app updates to 3.04, no notifications until about 3 hours after the voice mail is left or I restart the phone.
Unfortunately I can not  ascertain at this time whether or not the issue is solely the application or if it is my phone as well. I say this because my original Galaxy Note 3 was having issues where the operating system would unexpectedly crash during calls with an "android.stop.error" message. Then the touch screen became over sensitive and the screen was activating even when I was not touching the screen and also when I was holding the screen up to my ear the screen would activate. Now I have read that this is an issue with the touch screen on some Galaxy Note 3's. Well, my replacement phone fixed that and it fixed the "android.stop.error" messages, but now the new phone is crashing anytime I go in to Contacts. I have completed a factory reset several times and I can repo the issue even when I have not restored any applications to my phone.
With all the issues I can not determine is the issue is solely an application issue or if it is an issue with the phone it's self.