BT removing Address Book Facility

[hallsworthb]

A useful feature of BT has been the address book. My online bills show people names rather than number. I see it is being removed and wonder why?

This from the address book:

We regret to announce that this address book capability on BT.com will be withdrawn on 17th March 2018. After this date your address book will no longer be accessible, and your online bill views will no longer show names in place of a dialled numbers. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

[conrad · Accepted solution]

Not at all surprised as some time ago the current calls detail only showed numbers rather than names. It was queried at that point on this forum with the response that BT didn't think people used the address function. So this is the final step to completely remove names from the system.

[hallsworthb]

Thanks 😞

I would guess that a vote of one wont challenge the scorer!

Bob

[WelshMountain]

Rather annoyed about this - yet another reason for me to look at alternative telephone providers!

[hallsworthb]

An inconvenience for me rather than a deal breaker, but I agree that it is annoying.

[Sue036]

I only realised this facility had vanished when I came to check my recent bills last week.

I'm quite annoyed about it as I used it to flag up any unusual calls. Like most people nowadays I rarely dial an actual number as I have them all stored in my phones, either mobile or cordless. Hence, I am now faced with a long list of numbers and have no easy way of working out what they all are!

That's bad enough, what has made it much worse for me is that I spent the best part of an hour being passed back and forth to different people when I rang up to query it last week and was eventually told that it was a problem that would be fixed 'in a couple of days'. Clearly they just said that to get rid of me!!

Firstly, can someone please tell me how I was meant to know about this change - was it in the small print somewhere that I overlooked?

Secondly, any advice as to how I can check my bills now that they are just a list of mysterious numbers?

Does everyone else just ignore the details of their bills and pay up regardless?!!

[hallsworthb]

I saw it in February - It was on the address book site I think. That's why I started the thread.

I am creating a lookup table in Excel, but it will take a while as I don't really have time 😞

Bob

[Sue036]

Hi Bob,

I don't know what the 'address book site' is or was, but can you confirm that the information was not sent out to customers or shown on their bills?

Re EXCEL, I suppose I could make and keep a list as well ... if I could find the time!

Sue

[hallsworthb]

You used to be able to go to the "Address Book" to edit names. The announcement was in there.

BT have never told me it was going apart from through there. They were probably worried that they would get too many complaints from the people that "Never use it".

Bob

[conrad]

I tend to check my usage every 2 days or so - it's a lot easier than looking at the bill and you are alerted quickly to any unusual calls or unexpected costs.