TalkTalk's hidden voicemail charges

Caveat_Emperor

Whilst signing up for the TT's Black Friday offer I saw that the Voicemail options were either "Voicemail Plus" (£1/mth) or "None". I queried this via online chat and after half-an-hour (!) finally found out that ordinary voicemail is charged at 1p per use, ie every time you dial 1571 you get charged 1p. It's not a deal breaker but it could really add up if you are plagued by junk diallers.

Rodders53

Just disable the Voicemail feature via your account. It may even be the default with TT standard voicemail?

It's what we do for whichever service provider we use (mobile and landline). We have an answer machine for that at home.

Caveat_Emperor

In my case Voicemail is my answerphone so I wouldn't want to disable it.

SpanishBlue

Caveat_Emperor wrote: »

Whilst signing up for the TT's Black Friday offer I saw that the Voicemail options were either "Voicemail Plus" (£1/mth) or "None". I queried this via online chat and after half-an-hour (!) finally found out that ordinary voicemail is charged at 1p per use, ie every time you dial 1571 you get charged 1p. It's not a deal breaker but it could really add up if you are plagued by junk diallers.

Opt in to "Callsafe". It's free to do so, and you will get very few, if any cold calls after that.

Caveat_Emperor

SpanishBlue wrote: »

Opt in to "Callsafe". It's free to do so, and you will get very few, if any cold calls after that.

Thanks. Hadn't heard of that - will look into it!

Caveat_Emperor

Now I'm with TT and have an account I can see that my package includes "Free standard voicemail and privacy features"! :huh:

Meanwhile I've received an email from them telling me "If you have Voicemail activated on your account, we now charge 2p each time you dial '1571'." Checking my bill I find that I have already been charged 2p for ringing 1571 even though it isn't even activated on my account!

Ah, the joys of changing service providers!

jbuchanangb

Cast you mind back to when there was only one phone provider, called BT. They introduced a “free” voicemail service, whereby you could receive calls when not at home and retrieve them by dialling 1571.

In those days of course, if you were out, or on the phone, the phone company got no revenue because the call did not connect. With the “free” voicemail, they now got revenue from the caller, because the call connected.

Now, the picture is different. Everyone is on a different phone company. So it is not TalkTalk who get revenue when someone calls you, and leaves a message. That money goes to the caller’s phone company. No surprise then that TT have decided to charge you for retrieving your messages.

Cancel the 1571 service and get a base station with built in answering machine.