Howdy Robert,
It sounds like your Visual Voice Mail is not functioning correctly for you. I would suggest you use the troubleshooting in the following article about troubleshooting this feature, named:
Get help with visual voicemail on your iPhone
- Restart your iPhone.
- Check for a carrier settings update.
- Update your iPhone to the latest version of iOS.
- Make sure that your voicemail is set up. You can check this by dialing your phone number from your iPhone.
- Make sure that you have a good cellular network connection. You can check this by trying to make an outgoing call.
- Call your iPhone from another phone and try to leave yourself a voicemail.
- Reset your network settings by tapping Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
- Reset your voicemail password.
- Contact your carrier and make sure that you have the voicemail feature on your plan.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.