All about Voicemail

About Voicemail

Use Voicemail to make sure you don’t miss important calls. It answers calls when you’re busy or away, lets callers leave a message, and gives you easy ways to listen to them at home or when you’re out.

All home phone customers have Voicemail.

It lets you:

• record a personal greeting and change it whenever you like
• store messages for later
• listen to messages when you’re away from home, using a PIN

When you have a new message, you’ll hear an interrupted dial tone.

Premium Voicemail

Premium Voicemail gives you extra features on Digital Voice and Home Phone Essentials. If you have a copper service from us, you already get these features:

• Store more messages
• Receive longer messages
• Keep messages for longer
• Get a Voicemail message alert to let you know when a message is left while you’re already on the phone

Message storage and length

The table below shows how many messages you can store, how long they’re kept, and the maximum length for each message..

Record a personal greeting

You can record one personal greeting for your home phone. Callers hear the same greeting whether the line is busy or unanswered.

1. Dial 1571 from your home phone
2. Choose Option 2 from the main menu
3. Choose Option 1 to record your own greeting, or Option 2 to use the standard greeting
4. Record your message after the tone
5. Press # to save it
6. Confirm or re‑record your greeting. Press * to return to the greeting menu

Set up a Voicemail PIN

You’ll need a Voicemail PIN to listen to messages when you’re away from home or link Voicemail to a mobile number.

1. Dial 1571 from your home phone
2. Choose Option 3 for settings and features
3. Choose Option 3 again to set up or reset your PIN
4. Enter a PIN with 4 to 10 digits

Listen to your messages

Listen at home

When you hear an interrupted dial tone:

• dial 1571 to listen to new messages
• to hear saved messages, dial 1571 and choose Option 1

If you’re using a Digital Voice handset, the screen shows how many messages you have. Press the Voicemail button to listen.

If you miss a call while you’re already on the phone, Voicemail can take a message and ring you shortly after you hang up to let you know.

Listen when you're away from home

1. Dial your home phone number.
2. Wait for Voicemail to answer.
3. Press *.
4. Enter your Voicemail PIN.

Change how many times the phone rings

You can change how many times your phone rings before Voicemail answers.

Using your BT account

1. Sign in to your BT account.
2. Go to your products and choose Manage.
3. Select Digital Voice, then Voicemail.
4. Choose how many rings you want and save your changes.

Using your phone

1. Dial 1571.
2. Choose Option 3 for settings and features.
3. Choose Option 2 to set the number of rings.
4. Listen to the confirmation and end the call if you’re happy.

When your mailbox is full

Callers hear:

    “Sorry, this mailbox is full, it cannot accept any more messages.”

When you dial 1571, you’ll hear:

    “Welcome to Voicemail. Voicemail is completely full. Please delete any unwanted messages.”

Delete old messages to make space. Once deleted, messages can’t be retrieved.

Using Voicemail with other calling features

Call Waiting

If a call comes in while you’re already on the phone:

• you’ll hear an intrusion tone
• the caller hears a Call Waiting announcement
• if you don’t take the call, it goes to Voicemail after 21 seconds

Reminder Call

If you don’t answer a Reminder Call, it won’t divert to Voicemail.

Call Diversion

If Call Diversion is active, you won’t hear the usual interrupted dial tone. You’ll only hear a changed dial tone when there’s a new Voicemail message.

1471

1471 updates as normal if:

• Voicemail answers because there’s no answer
• Call Waiting is active and you don’t take the second call

It won’t update if a call goes to Voicemail while the line is busy.

Alarm systems

Some social alarms and burglar alarms may not be compatible with Voicemail. Check with your alarm supplier before using it.