Elderly/vulnerable customers without Broadband - Notification of new Digital Voice service

[Tel61]

Colin, you are being unnecessarily rude. Many people have found this confusing, and not just 'stupid' or elderly people. I sincerely hope you are not a representative of BT.

[Tel61]

Apparently you call 1571 and select 4 to change the number of rings before it answers. This was not on the normal BT website. This is all new to me as well. We have just had a family bereavement, and lord knows how many people have left messages on our answering machine. So I guess I'm going to have to call 1571 and make appropriate apologies to those concerned.

[WSH]

To be fair, it wasn’t Colin that was rude.  That was RIC9380.  (And I agree with you, by the way).

For the record, the settings are at:

MyBT > Your products > Digital Voice (Manage) > Voice mail essentials (Manage)

but if you can set it over the phone, fair enough.

[Tel61]

Apologies to Colin then, and I hope the other guy is seeing this.

[ChrisGee]

Does the FAQ give a solution to the query? If not then i fail to see the point in reading them.

[ChrisGee]

You should work for The Samsritans.

[Tel61]

To be honest. I've never seen an FAQ that does.

[Jane2018]

In my view BT should issue people with a laminated card with the 20 - 30 differences and deliver it to homes, rather than just say you plug and play and that it is easy. instead they should list the various major differences and things you need to change for how answering services work to need for a new modem if you do not have a hub 2 and all the rest. it is very deceptive to say it is simple and you plug in the phone and off you go. I  would much rather have honesty and a list of clear steps such as if you currently use BT voicemail/digital voice this is what you need to do. If yuo have your own answering machine this is what you need to do. You will no longer be making calls within London without 020 and will have to dial the extra digits etc etc etc. There are loads of big differences.

I was also told London was moving to Digital Voice by end of 2023. In anticipation I removed 6 landlines from around the house and now just have the 2 numbers ringing into my office - it was obviously some kind of anti climax as no sign of a move to digital voice as yet and we are now into 2024.

[Tel61]

Jane, I agree with you 100 per cent. I have just discovered that no less than seven messages were left on my phone during December, some of which were messages of sympathy for my recently deceased mother-in-law. This is a serious mistake BT.

[iniltous]

If a message has been left on 1571 , dialtone changes to a modulated tone ( 2 tone dialtone ) so as soon as you lift the handset to make a call you are notified of a waiting message, obviously if you rarely make outgoing calls you may be unaware , in the same way you would be unaware if someone rang while you were out , although I would concede that someone is more likely  to call back if they had no answer , rather than leaving a message.

If you have no need for a free answer service and would prefer this facility were removed ( although it seems that getting something that was once charged for but is now free  is cause for complaint)  it can be removed.

TBH , if 7 messages were left during the previous month , presumably  at no time during that month you picked up your phone to make a call , otherwise you would imagine you would  wonder ( and make enquiries ) why is there a funny / different sounding dial tone , if you don’t make calls at all ( and if you didn’t lift the handset to make a call during December, perhaps you would be better off with the cheaper version of BT Broadband that has no telephone service associated with it ,  then  people have no option but to call your mobile and your problems with DV disappear.

As far as a serious complaint, what exactly is being complained about , being on Digital Voice at all , or giving you a free answer service but not explaining sufficiently well how to use it ,