Deleted voice mails keep reappearing

I was able to delete my voicemails on my iPhone 5S by following these steps:

1) Delete only (ONLY ONE) voicemail. System may hang for awhile but it should work.

2) Click DONE at top of Voicemail page

3) Scroll to bottom and click on 'Deleted Messages'

4) Click 'Clear All'

5) Go back to voicemail list and repeat steps 1-4.

6) After you clear out 5-10 voicemails the OS seems to respond faster so you can try deleting multiple messages at once until you're cleared out.

Good luck!

I too am having this same issue on my 5s running the latest updates on iOS 7. marksi31 - your suggestion works, but I have dozens of voicemails. It's ridiculoous that the OS, visual VM or whereever the point of failure is would require us to go through one at a time.

Apple - please fix!

Yes Apple Please fix asap, though it appears to be going on for years now.

I too am having issues with deleting voicemail via the visual voicemail on iphone 5s. My VM is continually full because I can't delete messages. Seems odd when one pays nearly $500 and signs a two year agreement, a simple task such as deleting voicemails is so difficult and on going....

Once I visited the Apple Store and discussed the deleting voice messages problem they suggested changing my voice mail password. I changes it and now deleting unwanted voicemail messages works correctly. A very easy fix.

I have the Iphone 5S and have had this issue since I purchased the phone, about a week after it was first released. I changed my voicemail password which did nothing. This seems to be something wrong with the communication method Apple uses with their visual voicemail and ATT.

My issue is so bad that I can actually have the same voicemail in the voicemail folder and the deleted messages folder.

I can delete it, then go into the deleted messages folder to clear it and it plays the new voicemail sound before I clear it. So I clear it and it takes me back to the voicemail folder and look I have a new voicemail! It is the one I just deleted! LOL come on!

I receive a lot of voicemail messages for my work, so it is very frustrating having to delete the same voicemail messages over and over to make sure my voicemail does not fill up. And I am not exaggerating when I say I have to attempt to delete the same messages sometimes 10 or more times! Sometimes it will even say they are gone and I succeeded. I will then go to my voicemail folder and it will have all the messages it said I had deleted hours ago. This is the most I have been frustrated with an Apple product ever.

I called ATT and they were unable to solve the issue. They just say, "Do not use the Visual Voicemail if it is not working." Ah well, just venting so maybe someone at Apple will see this and escalate the issue to fix it.

I have an iphone with newest upgrade...One voicemail would not delete...I would delete it and think that it would be in "deleted messages" but it would immediately reappear. i tried the old fasioned attemt and accessing my voice mail...but no messages were in the cue.

I read several posts here and simply shut off "cellular" and deleted the message .... I rset cellular. Message is gone. 🙂

I have the latest version of iOS 7 and I keep having the zombie voicemail problem. I delete a voicemail only to have it reappear a few minutes later back in my voicemail folder.

This bug makes visual voicemail very frustrating. This used to happen for me on my old iPhone 3GS on earlier version of IOS but I just attributed it old hardward. Now I have a 5s and the same problem.

As a software engineer I find it hard to believe that Apple and ATT are not addressing this issue.

How do we file a formal bug report with Apple and ATT?

Try calling in to your voice mail and manually deleting the messages via the phone interface. I use AT&T so it is 7 to delete, then 19 to listen to and erase deleted messages - again by hitting 7.

After doing that, (so far) my issues of 'zombie' messages appears to have cleared up.

Try calling in to your voice mail and manually deleting the messages via the phone interface. I use AT&T so it is 7 to delete, then 19 to listen to and erase deleted messages - again by hitting 7.

After doing that, (so far) my issues of 'zombie' messages appears to have cleared up.

Thanks SamBlap, your solution was the only one that worked for me. I thought that verick's solution would be the fix, but I never could find the RED button over top of my voicemail icon after restarting and turning off airplane mode. It might have been becasue I was trying to delete 17 of 30 messages. (Not all of them). Anyway, I had to do them one by one, but deleted them once, then when I went to Deleted Messages, I would Undelete the message, then go back, delete it again, Go to Deleted Messages, and the 2nd time would Clear All. it's been 30 minutes and they haven't reapeared. I have iOS 7.1 on an iphone 5S AT&T. Not sure it really matters though.

Thanks again.

This has been happening to me for quite some time, through the last few software updates so I dont think it's a new problem. I seem to be able to delete most of the voice mail messages as long as I dont delete more than 5 at a time. If I delete 6 they have appeared in the in box before the clear all button in the deleted folder is even enabled yet. I got rid of them with a combination of everyones suggestions in this thread because no one procedure worked. I think it's a timing thing between iOS and AT&T and that they are probably still arguing amonst themselves as to who's fault it is.

Following on the other excellent suggestions in this thread I put the phone in airplane mode. Deleted all the voicemails and then foce quit the phone app, I didn't have to restart. Do that by double clicking the home button and then swiping the phone app picture upwards. Then restart the phone app and turn off airplane mode. This time the clear all button eventually enabled and I was able to make them go away. They haven't returned.

Finally Solved......

I have been struggling like everyone else for months with this problem. My problem first appeared when I got the 5S. I purchased it as soon as it was released. I called Apple and AT&T and was told several times that they had not heard of this problem. BS. This thread goes back years! I did all of the typical stuff like resetting the phone, going to AT&T (where the swapped the SIM card once) going to Apple, completely reloaded the OS, etc. Nothing worked. Yesterday I had enough and went back to the genius bar. I was not leaving without a new phone or at the very least beta software (7.1) loaded on my phone. I have a very technical job and have to diagnose similar problems all of the time. Logic started to kick in. My entire family (3 others) all have the same exact phone. None are experiencing this problem. If the OS was causing the problem, then why did completely reloading the OS not solve the problem? This leads me to believe there is a hardware issue that is causing the problem with certain phones. I finally had another person from Apple come over and try to convince me that the software engineers are finally aware of this problem (as of about a week ago, yeah right!) and that swapping the phone would resolve nothing. When the guy ran diagnostics on my phone I should mention that several apps were also continually crashing. I asked him doesn't that make you suspect of the hardware? My point was, look I've tried everything else. I've been beyond patient waiting for you guys to resolve this. The only thing we haven't done is swapped the phone. I've bought every model iPhone from day one and as a loyal customer I think I deserve a new phone so at least we can say we have tried everything. Begrudgingly, they swapped the phone. They said OK we'll swap it but I am 99% sure your voicemail problem will still be there. Well I am happy to say they were wrong! The new phone has not only solved the problem but has also fixed issues where it seems to lock up or freeze momentarily. I am convinced Apple is trying to software their way out of this versus swapping countless phones. As a loyal Apple customer, I am extremely disappointed in how they are handing this. I have a very small business and sometimes when things go wrong you simply have to eat it. Getting in front of the problem and being honest with your client is essential to maintaining them as a customer. They have not done that here.

I've been trying everything to get my voice mails to delete. I've tried the suggestions on this thread, but to no avail, those pesky voice mails keep coming back.

The thing that has worked for me (so far) is to delete messages for a single date. For example, I deleted all the voice mails that I received on 1/25/14, then went to deleted messages and cleared them. Whenever I selected messages that spanned across multiple days, they would end up coming right back. When I only deleted voice mails that were from a single day, they did not come back.

Dust-iMac's solution worked for me too. Only if I go into the Deleted Messages folder too quick, the delete button is grayed out. Need to wait @ 10 seconds after deleting and going into the Deleted Messages folder.

Kind of a PITA, but at least it works.

Greg

Verick, Thank you...a genius you are!!! i just bought an iphone 5s five days ago and the visual voicemail already had "zombie" voicemails, two in fact, that would not delete...followed your steps and , bam, problem solved! I too move around alot and I think the different tower hook ups have something to do with it, thx again