Hi,

My husband tells me that a little while ago he got a call from a recorded message that he thinks mentioned the words 'messaging service' but cannot remember what he did during the call, and promptly forgot all about it. Today he was told that someone had left a message for him the other day, but the telephone message indicator had not been flashing to inform us that a message had been left on the main house phone. So where did this message go?

He did a test today, calling the house phone from his mobile and it did go to a messaging service and not the phone answerphone. It appears that if the answerphone is not activated, after a few rings it switches to this unknown message service, which we do not know how to access, having not requested it in the first place (unless my husband did this inadvertently in response to what was said on the call he received!). So this is where the message went the other day (and goodnesss knows how many more).

We don't even know how we tell whether there is a message waiting.

Does anyone know anything about this 'messaging service' and how we can get rid of it?

Try ringing 1571.

Had a look at what 1571 does, and it seems it's a BT feature. We are with Plusnet for line rental. I have messaged them to see if they have anything to do with it. In the meantime, if we leave our answer phone switched on, this seems to take priority and we see the light flashing if we have a message.

It could be that your handset has an answering machine built in too if you have it try looking through your phones user guide if not its not just BT that have 1571 most providers do too.

Yes, we have one phone in the house that has a built in answerphone, which is what we normally use when we go out.. If we leave that on, the messages go onto it, but if it's not on it will now go to this other message service that has recently appeared. The person who left the message the other day must have called when we were in but had not heard the phone ring, as the answerphone would not have been switched on.

I dialled 1571 this morning and it does say welcome to your messaging service, but there were no messages on it.

I know you are with Plusnet but this reminds me of something that used to happen on my VM fone, although it might still have been ntl.

I iused to have the Voicemail service and every so often it would (for no explained reason) be reset. And I would get a message similiar to what you are getting. Basically you have to listen to the whole message and it tells you what to do to activate the service.

If you haven't asked for the Voicemail then it might have been applied in error and you need to call your Customer Services.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help. Will keep digging to get to the bottom of the mystery.

I have messaged Plusnet, but not had a reply yet.

Main thing that worries me is that we are going to be charged, when this is not something we willingly set up.

Just dial 1571 on your phone and it will tell you the status!

I did dial 1571 and it stated that there were no messages. Strange as someone said they'd left one, but it wasn't on the phone answerphone either.

I finally received a reply from Plusnet, and they confirmed that a 1571 service had been added to our line, so my husband had obviously pressed something during that recorded call to set this up, as we hadn't had it previously. Plusnet have now removed it from the line.