Unable to delete voicemails on iPhone X. (iOS 13.0)

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I am close to throwing this iPhone X into the trash and reverting back to a flip phone. Now that my rant is over, here is the problem.

I have at least a hundred voicemails dating back 15 months that I cannot delete. I have tried everything other than a total reset of the phone itself. I've re-booted at least 5 times. . I've even called my own number and I only had access to one voice mail where I deleted it (but it is still on my iPhone).

I have turned on Airplane mode, disconnected from Wi-FI and Bluetooth and have done all the tricks I can find out there concerning this problem. I am just trying to lower my blood pressure a little so I came here, hoping for an answer.

And it cannot be a memory problem..... my phone has 256 GB of storage space but I only have 25 GB of data stored...(Yeah, I am NOT a power user) ;-)

Any help this side of a ball peen hammer would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Pat
 

chscag

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Hey Pat:

Good to hear from you again.

Which carrier are you using? I know that when voice mails are stubborn and won't delete, your carrier usually can delete them from their end. Of course, the worse scenario would be having to reset your phone but even at that, I'm not sure that would remove them.

I know that with T-Mobile (my carrier) that whenever I delete a voice mail it goes into deleted limbo and must be selected again to completely delete it. Perhaps your voice mails work the same way?
 

IWT


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Hi Pat

As Admin chscag already mentioned, your carrier does,or can, affect the way voicemails are deleted.

Whether this helps or not, here’s how it works on my iPhone X.

Open phone app. Tap on Voicemail. Select the one or more you want to delete and confirm. Then I see a “message “ saying Deleted Messages with a the number so far deleted. When I tap on that, it gives me the chance to Clear All or return to Voicemail.

In others words, deleting once, retains that Voicemail just in case you need to recover it - or permanently delete it.

Just as in Photos, for example.

Maybe that may help you?

Ian
 
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Hey, Ian!

Thank you also for responding. As you can see from my reply to chscag, I was "off the grid" for a couple of days :)

Let me go downstairs to retrieve my phone and I will give your protocol a try....but I think I've done that before but I'll try it once again.

If that does not work, I guess I'll spend an hour or two on hold this afternoon and try to get hold of a human at AT&T to see if they can help!

Thanks, Ian!!!

Cheers!

Pat
 
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Hi, chscag!

For some reason, my first response to you (before to Ian) went into the ethers somewhere.....so I am trying again.

My carrier is AT&T. I have tried several 'ways' of deleting these pesky voicemails (most are Scammers) but nothing so far has worked.

I'll try Ian's method to be sure, but I guess it'll mean a long, protracted call to their customer service to see if they can delete them on that end.

I have also noticed (I do not know if this is a carrier issue or an iPhone issue) but when I cannot answer a call (to be honest, I answer NO calls that aren't on my caller list). Sometimes a voice mail will register immediately after the call, but more so it may come in 30 minutes to 4 hours later and twice in the past 3 months it was well over 24 hours! I have no clue as to what that's all about...... but now I just want to delete these Scammer calls.

I'll try Ian's suggestion and if that does not work then it's a call to the carrier. Whoopee ;-(

Thanks, chscag!

Cheers!

Pat
 
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Only because nobody said it, the way to delete a voice mail is to find it in the list of Recents, swipe left on it, then tap "Delete." On my iPhone they disappear immediately and completely. Always worked perfectly on my iPhone XS.
 
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chscag and Ian.....

OK, here's what going on......

I just rebooted the iPhone X. (Running newest iOS... 13.0)

I opened the phone app and then went into Voicemail.

Upper right hand corner, I tapped on Edit, then tapped on the left hand circle next to each VM, and after doing this to all 100 or so of them, I tapped bottom right corner saying Delete. They immediately disappeared....and within 10 seconds they re-appeared.

I then went to the bottom of the VM list and there are two "folders" One says Blocked Messages and the Other says Deleted Messages.

When I hit Delete All in the Deleted Message 'folder'.....they again disappear but reappear almost immediately.

Then I tried this....... I scrolled from Right to LEFT on the little 'i'circle, and a bright red DELETE box appears behind each VM. I touch that and the message disappears. But before I can go from the bottom of the list up to the top, they re-appear again almost as fast as I can delete them.

Can you understand now why I want to take a hammer to this phone? With every new model I've bought ( started with the 4), each one was WORSE and different from the previous model. I am on my fourth 'model' already, and would absolutely love to find my old Nokia flip phone from decades ago that was bulletproof. And yes, ALL it did was make and receive CALLS. (I hate texting too--guess I am showing my advancing years).

So my next thing is to call AT&T customer service to see what they can do. A thorough duckduckgo search of the net a couple of days ago didn't really help with this matter (and yeah, the Apple forums on their website were extremely lame with this problems although hundreds had indicated they were having the same problems).... that's why i always come HERE when I cannot locate an answer to a problem!

Thank, guys!

I'll let you know if AT&T can help me or if it is ball peen hammer time! :)

Cheers!

Pat
 
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Hey, Jake!

Thanks for the suggestion...but that did not work either.

If AT&T cannot do this, luckily I have an Apple store within walking distance of my house and I'll make an appointment with them.

If they cannot fix it, they will be replacing it with a NEW phone.

Cheers!

Pat
 
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Here's the latest:

I found an article saying to reboot, go into Airplane mode, turn off WI-FI and Bluetooth...then delete away you voicemails and they will NOT come back!

Well, they did. All of them were back in seconds.

Then, I dialed my own number, held down the 1 for a couple of seconds and entered my voice mail box. There was only ONE voicemail in there, none of the other 100 or so were in there. I did delete that number, about 15 minutes ago, and so far it has not returned to my phone.

One down, 99 to go.

Next is a call to AT&T, and if that doesn't work, I am heading to the Apple store first thing in the morning.

Cheers!

Pat
 

chscag

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Next is a call to AT&T, and if that doesn't work, I am heading to the Apple store first thing in the morning.

AT&T should be able to remove those voice mails. I'm not sure that Apple will be of any help with that. Even if they give you a new phone, the voice mails are still being stored in your personal voice mail box which is maintained by your carrier. (AT&T)
 
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Did you try the #4 suggestion at that support site?:
4. Clear Deleted Voicemail Messages
If you have successfully deleted your voicemail messages but they reappeared after some time, this means that the messages you delete are not actually erased from your iPhone storage. Since the messages are still available, it is likely that they will reappear in your inbox after some time. The solution to this problem is to clear the deleted messages. Here are the steps to do this: ...
iPhone Won’t Delete Voicemail? Top 7 Solutions in 2019


PS: And some people keep asking me why I still insist on using an old Samsung flip-phone cellphone!!! Never had such a problem!!! :Smirk:



- Patrick
======
 

Rod


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I have an easy solution, no voicemail.
Honestly, most of my voicemail messages required reply or were from people I did not want to reply to anyway.
If I miss a call, I can see it in my Missed Calls. If its from someone not in my contacts I use a text shortcut to send them an SMS saying, "Sorry I missed your call please try again." Often they don't. In some instances the SMS will not go through. In those cases I usually block the number.
As for the others, the ones in my contacts, I either call them back at my convenience or send them the above SMS.
I think Voicemail is just a revenue raising ploy by my carrier. Who likes being diverted to Voicemail? Nobody. Who likes wasting time listening to telemarketers or people who can't deliver a concise, meaningful message in the time limit requiring you to call them for clarification. Nobody.
But carriers get three call fees which would in the old days have been one. eg. Rang Fred, no answer, I'll try again later, got through later. One call fee.
 
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Rod, your approach makes sense in an environment where there is a per-call charge. In the US, one pays a flat monthly fee and is free to make as many calls as one wishes with no additional charges. So having voicemail has that same one monthly fee, but you can call in to get the messages for no additional cost. Now one could argue that paying the fee for the service is additional revenue, but not in the sense of being driven to make another call, with fee.
 

Raz0rEdge

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I'm with Rod on this one. My voicemail has absolutely zero value for me. The bulk of them are appointment reminders which I don't need to respond to. Anyone who actually wants to get in touch with me will text me and those who shouldn't are already blocked anyway. :)

This ghost voicemail issue definitely sounds like a carrier thing that AT&T should help resolve.
 

chscag

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I agree with you Ashwin. My voicemail is utterly useless as it's only telemarketers and junk callers who seem to use it. My doctor and dentist appointment reminders are by text which is what I prefer.
 

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I didn’t know that about US call charge system Jake. It doesn’t work that way in Australia or Indonesia but I maintain that as a service it’s more of a PITA than an advantage.
 

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What used to happen to me, particularly in Aus was I would get a VM notification, I ring VM to find it was someone wanting me to call them back, I’d try calling them only to be diverted to their VM and so on. In Aus plans give you a set call fee and amount of call time for voice calls and data allowances for internet and SMS per month according to your plan. If you exceed your allowance you can be charged a penalty rate which can be quite exorbitant. There have been cases of people running up hundreds of dollars in excess fees accidentally. Penalty rates for exceeding your quota are one of the major sales features of mobile plans in Aus.


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums
 
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LATEST UPDATE on my VOICEMAIL PROBLEM!!!

Longish.....but filled with very good info! ;-)

After trying a few suggestions here yesterday afternoon, I decided to call Apple. Well, I sent them a request to call ME....and they did. They said it would take 2 minutes for me to receive a call, but it only took about 8 seconds! That's thumbs UP #1.

I spent about 10 minutes on my wife's phone (because I didn't want to tie mine up) with a tech and she finally decided to hand me off to a more experienced tech, Zach. We tried Airplane mode with both WiFi and Bluetooth turned off, no joy. I rebooted, no joy. We then decided to completely restore the iPhone (Zach felt it was an Apple problem and NOT AT&T's-I'll tell you why below).

I have 3 computers, my original iMac from 2009 which I use mainly for net surfing and email. And yes, sending out photos to folks once I've finished LightRooming or Photoshopping them. The high end 2018 iMac with 64GB ram and 3 SSD drives has "seen" the internet only once...to download updates to Photoshop and LR. Other than that, it never sees or suffers from any interference of any kind. No email, no surfing, no iTunes, nothing but photography.....and it is an absolute screamer). My other contact with the world is my 2011 MBA (MacBook Air)...which I backup my iPhone to about once a month.

Zach suggested I use iTunes to 'restore' my latest backup and since that was going to take some time we 'logged off'.

I started to 'restore' the iPhone at about 7:00 PM last night, got tired of wondering about it around 11:00 PM and went to bed. When I got up this morning at 0430 (yeah, I have an internal alarm clock from 10 years of being on the Pro Balloon Tour that I cannot turn off---balloonists get up REAL early to fly) and the download was not done yet but my iPhone screen was all white with a black Apple sig on it but nothing was happening.

As soon as I disconnected the phone from the MBA a small box popped up saying "Your download is incomplete due to an error). My screen was locked...I could NOT turn it off no matter what I tried.

As soon as Apple opened, I sent another request for a phone call and 5 seconds after I sent it, the phone rang. I cannot remember her name, but she gave it the best she could for maybe 10 minutes to just get the phone turned off, no joy. She did convince me to upgrade to Mac High Sierra which she said would run fine on my mid 2011 MBA and she helped me get that started because the old OS I was running was not compatible with iOS 13.0

. While that was going on, she called my local Apple Store (thankfully, only 1.3 miles away) and got me a confirmed appointment for 4:00 this afternoon. She said I could 'walk in' this morning and possibly get help but may be there awhile. My day was pretty full so I opted for the PM appointment.

I got there at 3:55PM, sat a table for about 12 minutes until my tech came up. He did some 'magic' with the iPhone, finally got it to turn off (it had been on all day...locked up).....and proceeded to hook it up to his MBA and started to download version 13.1...which was released earlier today. He said 13.0 had some bugs and "this should get rid of them".

45 minutes later, the download was complete, he came over, helped me get the facial recognition and a new 6 digit code entered then told me to go home and set it up.

I did, which was kind of a PITA but not horrible..... made a few calls, then I went to my VOICEMAIL box where all 100 or so VM's still sat there...laughing at me.

I used the Edit button, chose each and every one of those damned messages, and hit the DELETE button, and they disappeared. Most importantly, they did NOT immediately return like that had done for a dozen or more times before. I then went to the bottom of the page, entered the DELETED MESSAGES folder, hit the CLEAR ALL button, and they have been gone now for hours. and I am finally a happy camper again!

To explain to chscag why I did NOT call AT&T........ One other suggestion Zack made yesterday before we rang off was to dial my iPhone number and try to delete the messages in my voicemail box....one by one. BUT......there was only ONE message in there, not 100 so I knew right there this was not an AT&T problem. I deleted that ONE message and it disappeared off my iPhone and never came back to join it's 99 friends that would not go away until this evening. ;-)

Moral of the story...... for some reason, the 13.0 version and the one that preceded it, for some reason, on MY phone, didn't not fully work. It took a complete re-store along with an update to my MBA's OS to fix this problem.....but for right now, it IS fixed.

I do know that my MBA, and most likely, my older 2009 iMac upstairs are eventually going to be totally non-supported in the future so their days for what I use them for are numbered. So I guess I'll just get a lower dollar but newer MBA or MacBook Pro and use it for communications and online stuff while still maintaining the 'sterility' of my newest iMac for photography....which it just absolutely does fantastic with what I ask it to do.

Sorry this a little long....... but those few here who know me know I can't say things in 2 sentences..... that's just me. :)

Cheers to ALL of you who responded.

Happy again in Buford, GA! lol

Pat
 

chscag

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Thanks Pat. Glad you got it worked out. And yes, it's a big advantage having an Apple Store in the local neighborhood. My local store is very close by also but the parking is horrendous. LOL.
 

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Good news in the end. Whatever did we do with our spare time before we got all these labour saving devices?
 

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