iphone 4S won't play voicemail messages

To Rob1519: deleting the voicemail messages and then playing them from the deleted folder worked for me and at least keeps me from having to reset my phone every time. Thanks so much for the post! Hopefully someone will find a permanent solution.

Can't listen to visual voice mail by tapping the caller's name unless I reset my 4s. I wouldn't mind if I only had to do it once, but I have to reset the phone every time I want to listen to a visual voice mail message. Something tells me that's not how the gang in Cupertino wanted this thing to work. Any ideas? Thanks!

This works, forget about resetting your phone, which I did and voicemail disappeared.

Call your I-phone number, yes, your own phone number. It comes up with a message to retreive your messages and to insert your security password or pin number. i set up a multi digit code. dialed the code in and the message played. easy pezie....:)

It would help if Siri could answer basic help questions, totally useless with respect to phone operation questions

.

My wife had same problem. disabled Siri voicemail returned working. She would get double beep when she tried to listen, lifting phone to her ear activated Siri. Siri is useless anyway

I agree. Siri's a nice sales gimmick but it doesn't quite do the job you need done. I'll try that disable Siri suggestion. Definitely a nice tradeoff if it can get me my voice mails throught the visual voice mail feature.

Hi everyone,

I was having the same issue for the past couple of days.

What worked for me was simple:

Completely power off your phone, wait a few minutes, and then restart your phone.

I am so glad it worked. All of my voicemails were still there. Whew!

Good luck!

Just came across this, and have yet another solution to try.

I have this problem periodically with my iPhone 4 (not 4S), on Verizon, as well. Sometimes rebooting or resettting the phone worked, but the problem kept coming back.

What worked for me to get the visual voicemail working consistently (thus far) was to first manually check my voicemail thru Verizon- ie, call in to my own phone number, enter my PIN, and listen to voicemail, where i discovered two things: 1) that there were nearly two dozen voicemails that i had deleted from my phone, but were still on Verizon's system, 2) and that there were some old voicemails showing on my phone that were NOT on Verizon's system. I used the Verizon call system commands to delete all the old ones from Verizon's system, and the phone commands to delete the old ones from my phone, powered down my phone and powered it up again, and -thus far- visual voicemail seems to be working again, and i was able to listen to two newer messages that previously would not play at all (even with the Deleted Messages tip above)

I'm wondering if part of the problem is with how Visual Voicemail interfaces with the wireless providers own voicemail systems, and what happens when either or both happens to glitch. Deleting all the rogue/orphaned voicemails on both systems worked for me. Thus far....

Disabling Siri worked for me. Seems the simplest solution as long as you are ot using Siri.

I am so sick of this issue... I figured it was because of Sprint (can't wait til my contract is up!), but if this is an Apple issue, Apple needs to solve it. Seriously - these phones cost way too much for a basic thing like playing voice mails to fail. Get it together, Apple.

This is a common issue, I know of many people struggling with this. Suggesting RESETing as a solution (which works for me - I have to do it EVERY day) is hardly a professional response. We need a fix!

Hey Guys,

I just switched from Android to Apple and I admit: I MADE A BIG MISTAKE 😟

My phone4s is brand new but the battery is %50 weaker than my ex- HTC incredile S! I can't increase its memory, and I miss all those cool free android apps. The charger wire is also too short ( apple is saving $ by cutting wires?!!! aren't its products enough overpriced already?)

As much as I love my macbook air, I hate my IPhone.

For the voice message issue, I added Fido (my career) voicemail number to my favourits and everytime I just dial that. Here is a list of fido provincial voicemail numbers:

Voicemail Retrieval/Deposit Numbers

iPhone Visual Voicemail Retrieval/Deposit Numbers

Cheers.

I was having the exact same issue. I received a voicemail that would not play. I'm happy to report that the manual restart of my iPhone fixed the problem (for now). This is the first time it has happened, and I've had my iPhone 4S for about 2 years now. And thank you all for this thread that helped me know others experienced the same problem. Though it baffles me that this thread was started in 2010, and it's still an issue. My carrier is AT&T, if anyone from Apple ever reads this stuff, and (shudder to think) would do anything to respond to it.

I Deleted voicemail the old fashioned way: The top of the screen lets you do that and you have to put in your code

next, I turned my iPhone off

then, I turn my iPhone on again

then I found I was able to visually delete messages on my iPhone no problem

I got lucky!

I Know this is way late and we all have different phones but I've had a 5c and a 6 plus and never a problem with the voicemail till now with my 6s plus. It's doing what you said your 4 s was. I mean sometimes I don't even have a dial pad it's so bad. Usually that's when my vioicemail is near full which is because I can't get to it except to call from a different number to clear it. I had an appointment at the geniius Bar but amazingly enough the last upgrade appeared before it and it seemed to help for a minute, is anyone else having this problem with the 6s plus??