iphone 4S won't play voicemail messages

try a reset, hold down the home/power button together until you see the apple logo and then release, then wait for you phone to boot back up. See if that helps.

No problem, glad it's working.

I had the same issue, and reset my phone as described. This did fix the problem; however, for about 5 minutes it looked like all of my voicemails were deleted. They showed back up, but be advised.

However, I will add that, although this fixes the problem in the short run, the problem continues to happen on a regular basis to both me and my husband. It is getting annoying to have to constantly reset the phone in order to listen to voicemails. Is there a more permanent fix in the works for this problem?

I have the same issue, and it seems to me that if you leave one voicemail undeleted then the problem does not happen. It seems to happen to me when I have an empty voicemail inbox.

I have the same issue also, even with unread meassages. I reset the phone , I can play the messages I want, leave some unread and a little while latter I cant play any till I reset the phone again.

Today I have a second problem, when I tap voice mail the phone dials voicemail insted of going to visual voicemail

Any suggestions ?

My wife and I have the same issue. Reset/rebooting fixes it temporarily, but this has plagued us since the phones were new. Can this be addressed please.

This happens to me all the time, too. Has anyone found a REAL fix?

Found this on a recent Apple post. The problem corrected itself when I call my number from my iPhone and retreived my messages that way. Then voicemail started working from the iPhone Voicemail icon. Hope this helps.

Follow these steps to troubleshoot issues with accessing voicemail on your iPhone:

1. Restart your iPhone.
2. Make sure you have good cellular network connection. You can verify whether you can make and receive calls.
3. Make sure your voice mailbox is set up properly. You can verify this by dialing your phone number from your iPhone.
4. Update your iPhone to the latest version of iOS.
5. Reset your network settings by tapping Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
6. Contact your carrier if:
   • You still cannot access voicemail
   • You experience difficulties with voicemail while traveling abroad
   • You are unable to reset or change your voicemail password

Additional Information

For more information about voicemail on iPhone, use the following resources:

• The Visual Voicemail section of the iPhone User Guide
• iPhone: How to reset or change voicemail password

Rammer, did you find this to work permanently, or do you have to do it every time?

It has worked so far. No issues to report.

Well, I was able to listen to the message by calling myself, but I still can't access voicemail through the Phone icon on my phone. I did actually get a call back from Apple today, telling me that this is a known issue with the phone (after they said it couldn't possibly be a phone issue the other day), but they don't have a fix for it, and there's nothing they can do. How incredibly frustrating.

I have found that if I delete the message and then go to the "deleted messages" area, I can play the message there. It's worked everytime without resetting the phone. It's a pain, but it works for me for now.

Voicemail is also crashing my iPhone 4 telephone app. Genius wiped the phone and reloaded firmware which worked for a week or two. Now I'm back to the crashed phone app problem and not excited about havong to restore firmware every couple of weeks. Surprising that Apple doesn't have a globl fix for this obvioulsly wide spread issue.