Calling contacts issue when using Siri

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duckDecoy

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#284543 29-Apr-2021 12:21

I upgraded my phone recently to an SE, and using siri to call certain contacts isn't working well in some circumstances. For example:

On my previous phone I could say "Call Jennifer", and it would call my (only) contact "Jennifer <last name>" Now when I say it Siri says "calling Nic Jenner (Roofer)"

On my previous phone I could say "Call Mum" and it would call my contact "Mum". Now when I say it Siri says "which one, Stefan's mum or Cam's mum?" I have contacts called "Stefan's Mum" and "Cam's Mum"

Bizarely the other day I said "Call Mum" and got the above reply, again said "Call Mum" and got the same reply, then out of frustration said "God you are hopeless Siri" ---- and it said "Calling Mum" and correctly did so.

Does anyone know how to fix this or train siri? It worked fine on my old iPhone 6.

EDIT - added info

Linux

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#2699551 29-Apr-2021 13:07

Was this iPhone brand new or 2nd hand?

duckDecoy

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#2699554 29-Apr-2021 13:11

Linux: Was this iPhone brand new or 2nd hand?

Brand new

rendezvous

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#2699663 29-Apr-2021 14:21

I had a similar issue while trying to use Siri in the car. I think I solved it by turning of iCloud for contacts. Allowing the phone to delete them all, then enabling it again. Please note that all my contacts remained on iCloud, so they weren’t lost. If you don’t use that feature, then deleting them all from your phone might not be the most useful idea.

TwoSeven

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#2700202 30-Apr-2021 18:17

I suspect that the issue might be that ones contact records don’t have unique tags.

Roughly, the voice command is transcribed into text, then the contact fields are checked for a match.

for me, if I say ‘Phone Dave’ and there is only one match, I’ll get the ‘just to confirm, you want to call Dave’. If I have two matches - say Dave Blogg and Dave Jones, I’ll get the reply ‘which one’. In this case one needs to be more specific ‘call Dave Jones’.

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duckDecoy

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#2701097 3-May-2021 12:27

TwoSeven:

for me, if I say ‘Phone Dave’ and there is only one match, I’ll get the ‘just to confirm, you want to call Dave’. If I have two matches - say Dave Blogg and Dave Jones, I’ll get the reply ‘which one’. In this case one needs to be more specific ‘call Dave Jones’.

I have 3 contacts with Mum in the tags, but Siri only asks me about 2 (neither of which is the one i want), which seems odd to me.