...The problem is that my 8X will not allow me to save the number if it has any commas in it. The commas are needed to pause the dialing after the *86 so that Voicemail has time to answer before you send the password. Without the commas the number just fails to go through at all. With the commas in place I get error messages from the phone. You can also use 'p' to pause the dialing in some cases, but the keyboard that comes up in this screen will not allow you to enter any letters.
Even though the keyboard doesn't allow you to add 'p' for pauses or 'w' for wait, you can copy them from Word/OneNote and paste them into the voicemail field. But the dumb design doesn't retain the string after you paste it into the field and save it. Dumb.
So, I'm left with having two tiles: the standard phone tile to see pending voicemails, and another (RapDialer) to quickly open another phone app and speed-dial my voicemail with the string that sends my password. In the perfect WP world, you should be able to tap a dedicated tile to go straight to voicemail - using your custom string - if you have pending VMs. Going to the phone app, then deciding whether you want to dial a number, look up a contact or check your voice mail is an awkward, Droid-like experience.
On Verizon, it's even more confusing for new folks: Verizon placed an app misleadingly titled, "Voicemail" - actually their Visual Voicemail ($2/month fee), which is
not a link to your standard voicemail (!). I've helped countless people who were tripped up by this (or accepted the $2/month fee suspecting that's the only way they could get their voicemails).
While it would be nice to have one tile to both alert you to pending VMs and give you one-tap access to them, that's not the way it is in WP8. And Verizon's deceptive 'voicemail' app makes one more thing to trip you up.