I just got my first bill since digital voice on 28 July and am going through it now. I always had the old Call Minder with my own personal recorded message including please email it is quicker to reach me etc etc so personalised.
When I spent an hour+ setting up digital voice a month ago I was able to record a similar message and all is working fine as before.
The bill today as well as £77 for broadband and calls has Voicemail with Call Protect £4.34 a month. I just looked up what Call Protect is and it seems to be a free thing BT give everyone.
Under wehat has changed since last bill iincludes "voicemail with call protect£ part month car from 28 July saying charge of £3.92 for your new sevice from 28 July £4.34 / month". and theb below that is Voicemail £4.34/month from 29 July to 24 Aug minus 3.78 "This is a refund on your voice mail at £4.34 a month" as well as refund for previous pagckage of 79. So they charge 4.34 for voicemail and then below have a credit and debit. I think I will need to wait until next month when there will be no complicated debits and credits just to see a new normal bill to see if they will be charging for voicemail..
AI keeps saying to check on my bt account whether I have "essentials" for voicemail or otherwise but it does not seem to say on my account even under voicemail. Nor does the bill pdf refer to anything called essentials. AI says if you want the following ie other than esssentials you get these things but I don't want any of themL
VIP number allocation
"Do not disturb" options
Larger mailbox capacity
Speech recognition
Enhanced message alerts
Longer storage times
Anyway I will wait until next month's bill. If I call BT they will lose me my landline number of 30 years and mess up my package and I will on the phone to some operative who does not understand for hours
