Ever since my wife and I transferred our mobiles from EE to BT we have been plagued by spurious voicemail alerts. These originate from the EE voicemail number +44 7953 223571. When you ring this number you indeed connect to a voicemail service which tells you that you have no messages.
Having put up with this since July, hoping that it might resolve itself, we have now had enough. So I rang BT technical support. His response was essentially "suck it up", i.e., there is nothing that BT can do about it because the problem is that there is a residual voicemail left in your old EE voice mailbox and this is tied to your mobile number (which remains the same because we transferred them over). Hence it is EE's responsibility and nothing to do with BT.
There are a number of difficulties with this response, the least significant of which is this: if there is a residual voicemail message causing this problem, why is it not there when I call the voicemail number? Note that the connection to the voicemail system works, i.e., it does not say "there is no mailbox associated with this Caller ID" or "you do not have authorisation to check this mailbox". On the contrary, it connects and says "no messages".
That said, the most significant problem is the attempt to pretend that this is nothing to do with BT! Technical support claim that they cannot prevent EE from calling my number, as if this were just like any other entity (person or organisation) placing a call to my mobile. But this is not true. Firstly, because the alert comes up stating:
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Voicemail
Dial +44 7953 223571
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But neither I (using Android) or my wife (using iPhone) have a contact called "Voicemail" so clearly this is _not_ just like any ordinary incoming call. Rather, it carries something with it which identifies it as being a call from a voicemail system, and I think it is entirely the responsibility of my network operator (BT) to manage such special incoming calls: they are after all supposed to be supplying me with a (singular, one only) voicemail service.
And secondly, of course, because BT and EE have a close business relationship. I have no relationship with EE _except_ through BT. To put it another way, if I had transferred my number to Three (say) instead of BT, would I have this problem with spurious alerts originating with EE? I don't think so.
So, before I set off down the arduous and tiresome route of raising a formal complaint and/or an appeal to the ombudsman, I thought I would check here to see if anyone has any useful advice.
Thanks in advance
John Sutton
