Message Centre - Help!

[Ben Rhydding]

Whenever I pick up my home phone, and get a dial tone ready to phone out, I am, after 4 seconds, automatically connected to "welcome to the message centre - please enter a mailbox number or wait". If I want to make a call I have to get the number in before the 4 seconds which is not always possible.

I assumed this was a VM voice mail service so I have asked them to turn it off. To my surprise they say it is not on! They have rechecked and confirm that it is not their service so I am stumped.

I am pretty certain that it is not the Binatone handset base station as this is basic and has no answer phone facility.

Any suggestions as to what this is and how I can get rid of it?

Thanks

Chris

[Gadgie]

Why didn't they check it out when they were telling you that you were not hooked up to message answering service?

I would call then up again and get them to stay with it until they can fix it for you, good luck.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Gadgie

Why didn't they check it out when they were telling you that you were not hooked up to message answering service?

I would call then up again and get them to stay with it until they can fix it for you, good luck.

A more obvious test and one they would be told to do would be to connect a different handset to see if that is causing the issue, just go to ASDA or somewhere similar and purchase a cheap handset or borrow one from a friend or a neighbour.

Once they have run their tests the agents diagnostic tool will advise them as above to tell the customer to test their line with a different handset.

No agent is going to stay on the phone with anyone once they have ascertained that the is no fault on the line, if it is your equipment is not their problem.

Also if you insisted on a technician visit and he proved it was your phone then you would incur a wasted technician charge of around £35 so testing it yourself is advisable.

[Ben Rhydding]

Thanks for replies
I have tested with other handsets and the problem is definitely with the line. If I dial 1571 I get the same voice mail message.
Spoke to VM Swansea to report fault again and they still can't explain it or correct it. It has been escalated and I am promised a call back soon.
I think It may be a hangover from when I had a free answer phone service with Telewest, but VM don't seem to know how to correct it. They have tried setting up and taking off VM voice mail but it makes no differerance. All very strange and annoying!

Chris

[Ben Rhydding]

Resolved. VM techie phoned to say that there was redundant data linked to my phone which gave a false flag that there was a message in a voice mail account I no longer had! This was causing an automatic connect to 1571 each time I lifted the handset which stalled.

So if anyone else has this problem insist on an engineers full diagnostic check.

Chris

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Ben Rhydding

Resolved. VM techie phoned to say that there was redundant data linked to my phone which gave a false flag that there was a message in a voice mail account I no longer had! This was causing an automatic connect to 1571 each time I lifted the handset which stalled.

So if anyone else has this problem insist on an engineers full diagnostic check.

Chris

If it is referred to 2nd line that should happen automatically but the new 2nd line in Swansea are in the main quite clueless just read some of their answers on the community forum.