Onetel and 1571 answer phone service

shrek101

I started using the Ontel service couple of months back, but I find it strange that the 1571 answer phone service BT provides doesn't seem to have any messages on of late. I normally get at least one or two a week, does the unanswered calls still route to the 1571 BT service?

I just wondered because I was with another company that Ontel owned and it works fine with them. I can ring 1571 but never any messages, or maybe no one loves me any more to ring me

Edinburghlass_2

Aw shrek, I would phone you if I knew your number :beer:

Have you signed up to the Onetel free 1571 service? I was with Onetel some months ago and signed up for their voicebox service thinking I could put my own message on however it turned out to be only your name that came up and nothing more.

From memory I then had quite a bit of bother to cancel it and go back onto the BT 1571 so this is maybe the problem you are having?

shrek101

Hi Edinburghlass

The service I have are

FreeCaller (whatever that is)
Preselection All Calls (whatever that is)
TopCaller (whatever that is)
Voicemail Basic (I assume this is the answer message seevice)
Home and Away Card (whatever that is)

I havent been given any info as to what these services
I clicked on voice mail and get this

You cannot request Voicemail because of one of the following reasons:

* You have no active Landline services
* Voicemail is already active for all your Landline services
* Voicemail is not compatible for any of your Landline services

Please Email Us with any queries about this.

Thanks for help

Edinburghlass_2

Yes voicemail basic was what I meant. I think you need to make sure with BT that you have their service on your line and not Onetel as you can't have both.

shrek101

I have BT 1571 and that apears to work but I never get any messages, I did until I went with Ontel. I use to be with another phone service which Onetel owned and that worked fine.

thefirs

Try phoning yourself from a neighbour or a mobile - if the answering service doesn't cut in, you'll know it's been extinguished. If it does, then recite yourself a little poem, then hang up and call 1571 from the home phone to see if it's got through. If you are told 'You have no messages', time to tell BT and or Onetel.

shrek101

I sent Onetel an email, They told me that I need to cancel 1571 service to get Onetel voicemail. Now there's an ordeal contacting BT with the menu system.

Anyone know how I can cancel BT 1571? Thanks for all the help.

FF99

shrek101 wrote:

I sent Onetel an email, They told me that I need to cancel 1571 service to get Onetel voicemail. Now there's an ordeal contacting BT with the menu system.

Anyone know how I can cancel BT 1571? Thanks for all the help.

If you have online access to your BT account (easily achieved) you can cancel the BT 1571 service with the click of a mouse.

I switched to the OneTel voicemail service last year whilst keeping my line with BT, as Onetel give the personalised greeting for free. It all works OK BUT it took a couple of weeks to get Onetel to have the service set up properly and their CS was cr*p. There are also intermittent faults where -for no apparent reason - a caller will have the call answered by the vociemail service but will get no welcome message or the ability to leave a message.

shrek101

I went on BT site but couldn't find how to cancel it, I spent at leats 30 minutes looking foir it. So went through the 5 million menus on the phone before finally waiting 12 minutes to speak to a human being. They told me it would take a few hours before it was cancelled, which it was. I rang Onetel India call centre and they then told me it would take 4 days, where as it took BT 2 hours to cancel.

shilcor

I have been trying unsuccessfully for WEEKS to get Onetel's 1571 service working. Their Customer Service is terrible and the Indian call centre people just don't seem to understand what I keep telling them. I have an answering machine plugged in (because their 1571 doesn't work) and twice now they have called, left a message on it and then emailed me to tell me that their Voicemail service is working fine - AAaaaarrrrgh !!!! I even disconnected it for a week and got their CS to telephone me to try and leave a message. They did this and accepted that their service wasn't working but still nothing has changed. I'm about to give up and re-enable the BT 1571 because at least that seemed to work although I only ever used it to take messages if the phone was in use because frankly I find a real answering machine a lot more useful and it speaks English !

shrek101

I still havent got the 1571 service working with Ontell they told me it would take 4 days. Okay its only just got past that, its now day 5, but still. If it can take BT jsut 2 housr to connect, why does it take Ontel over 4 days? which in my caes its taking longer