Turning Voicemail off on digital voice

[Glitzguru]

I have just been forced into changing to digital voice despite having little or no mobile signal coverage. To make matters worse I now find that Voicemail has been enabled without my knowing and I cannot find the way to turn it off. I am definitely not technical so could someone tell me in simple language how to get rid of it. Thank you

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

You can easily cancel Voicemail online. Go to www.bt.com/callingfeatures and click the Manage my calling features button. This will start an online order process. Put in your home number and postcode and confirm you're the BT account holder to continue.

The next screen will show any calling features that are currently on your line. To cancel Voicemail, scroll down and click the "Remove all my messaging features" radio button. Alternatively, if you'd like to keep BT Call Protect, click that radio button instead.

Click Continue to complete the cancellation order

You can also manage all your calling features (including ordering, upgrading and cancelling them) at www.bt.com/mybt.

[Glitzguru]

• Thank you so much - that was just what I was looking for.

[chrisjp]

I'm intrigued why you want to turn off voicemail. It's a free and unobtrusive feature of DV, and you can set the number of rings before it intervenes to as many as 10, giving you plenty of time to answer the phone if you want to.

[Schoey19]

Because if you have an answerphone it flashes a coloured light to show you’ve got a new message. It’s easy to see the light when passing the phone eg when you first come home from work or out for the day. If you are busy and /or don’t use your phone much, you don’t want to have to pretend to make a call to see whether the dialling tone is different which on our phone and my elderly father’s phone is the only way to know you’ve got a message.

[WSH]

Firstly, this is a six month old thread.  I doubt whether any of the above are still listening.

Secondly, if you set your answerphone to answer after, say, 5 rings and the 1571 service to answer after 10 rings, your answerphone will pick up first, so there is no need to turn off 1517 all together.

Bearing in mind that Digital Voice doesn't work in a power cut or if there is a fault with your broadband, this gives you some backup if your own answerphone cannot answer for any reason.

[Tim123]

Bearing in mind that Digital Voice doesn't work in a power cut or if there is a fault with your broadband, this gives you some backup if your own answerphone cannot answer for any reason.

Yes, that's probably why they've made voicemail standard on DV. However, it's misleading to the caller as they don't know that the recipient of the message might not hear it for several hours due to a power cut or broadband dropout.

[chrisjp]

A delay in the recipient hearing the message because of a power outage is hardly misleading to the caller I would have thought.
It's just as likely that the message recipient might be away from home and not get the message for several hours either. Or the recipient might just choose not to listen to, or respond to, the message for several hours.
I really don't understand why people want to turn this DV free feature off - are they perhaps looking for DV things to complain about!
One thing that is not such a good idea though - and that is BT leaving a "Welcome to DV" message on the 1571 voicemail when customers are migrated to DV. That of course generates an "interupted" dial tone and quite a few people mistake this for the engaged tone and think their DV isn't working.

[Tim123]

I switched mine off because I'm not at home for long periods and prefer to be contacted on the mobile in an emergency. I didn't get that message or stuttered dial tone when migrated.