Changing To New AT&T Data Plan, Breaks Voice Mail

Sorry, but I'm posting this in several iPhone Hardware Discussions, since I think it applies to all versions of iPhones.
I'm also sorry if this has been posted before, but I'm not looking for help or answers, I'm providing them.
I have been on the $30 per month unlimited data plan with AT&T. Today I decided to change to one of the lower cost, lower monthly data rate plans. I called up AT&T and they made the change.
What I didn't realize is that making this change broke my voice mail. Well, more specifically, it broke the voice mail on all 5 phones in our Family Plan.
By breaking voice mail I mean that people can no longer leave you voice mail messages. If they call you, they will get the standard message that this person does not have a voice mail box and you cannot leave them a message.
Unfortunately, you don't realize it's broke. Since no one can leave you a voice mail, you don't get any voice mail notifications. AT&T doesn't send you a message stating that they just broke your voice mail. Your voice mail is broke and you don't know it.
It was my wife who figured it out. She had several missed call notifications, but no voice mail notifications, which seemed odd. When she clicked on the voice mail icon, she was prompted to Set Up Your Voice Mail. There was no list of her existing voice mail messages. Just a button to click to start the set up process. Which she did. She was asked to enter her PIN and record an outgoing message, even though she had done this the first time she set up her voice mail. She entered both her PIN and outgoing prompt. But when she clicked Save she got an error message stating that she could not set up voice mail. Her voice mail needed to be set up, but it wouldn't let her. There was no suggestion in the prompt telling her what to do or why it was suddenly broken.
So, I called AT&T. The person I spoke said I needed to power down the phone, which I did. After powering the phone back up, voice mail was still broke. I was then transferred to AT&T tech support. That person told me power down the phone. Which I did, but with some skepticism. After powering the phone back up I was told to go back into voice mail, which was still asking me to set up my voice mail. I followed the prompts and entered my PIN and recorded my greeting. This time it worked. Not only did I get voice working again, but I could see all the old voice mails I had. Unfortunately, I cannot get any voice mail messages during the several hours it was broken because none could be recorded.
Technical support person did fix the problem. However, I had to contact all family members and we had to go through this same procedure (power off, wait, power on, re-enter a new PIN and greeting) for each and every phone. This took somewhere close to an hour of my time.
The AT&T technical support person explained to me that since I changed my data plan (from unlimited to 200 MB) new "configuration" data needed to be sent to the phone. To get this data to your phone, you have to turn the phone off so they can send the data. Then you have to renter all your voice mail data.
Incredible.
So, as I said, I'm not looking for help or answers. But I thought posting what I went through might be helpful to anyone else who might change their data plan.
Changing data plans = Broken voice mail .... Which requires a long phone call to technical support and reentering your voice mail data.
Sheesh.

I've been a cell phone user since the early days of analog cellular. Back in the days of brick phones, of which I was a user.
I've been a customer of of Cellular One, Ameritech, Verizon, T Mobile, Cingular and AT&T.
I've never experienced loosing my voice mail as I did today.
I considered my voice mail broken since I could not access my visual voice mail on my phone, I could not reset my voice mail on my phone (following the prompts on my phone) and no one could leave me a voice mail message if they called me. I called AT&T customer support and they could not get my voice mail working. I'm not sure what more could be broken, but I would classify my voice mail as broken.
You may find it acceptable to have your voice mail broken (or perhaps cut off) if you change your data plan, but I don't think that's acceptable.
I don't see how I made a major change to my account. I didn't make any changes to the types of data I can send or receive. The only change I made was to opt for a lower cost plan that delivers all the same data. That change resulted in all 5 members of my family plan to loose their voice mail.
You may be correct that all this needed was for it to be reset. But, I can't reset it. The customer service person could not reset it. It took the tech support person to be able to reset it. All of which was about an hour on the phone.
I don't think this experience should be typical. Maybe it isn't. Maybe for some strange reason, in my circumstance something more went wrong. But, that's not what AT&T told me. They told me what I experienced is typical.
So, I thought I would post this for people that might experience this issue, or think about changing their data plan so that they would know what to do.
But, perhaps I was wrong in using this Discussion site to post what I thought might be helpful.
I'm sorry. I will (as I told a previous poster) delete this post. As soon I as I figure out how.

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