A few months ago I switched my parents’ phone from BT to Virgin so that my dad could have the Virgin TV package and cheaper calls (I pay the bill for him anyway).
What I didn’t realise was that the phone has voicemail as standard. Looking through the literature, which I had to get off the Virgin website because they didn’t tell me any of this, you’re supposed to activate it yourself – but ours turned out to be active upon installation.
Not knowing you have a voicemail facility can be quite confusing to both callers and the line users. And this is how it has turned out. Apparently, all kinds of people have been leaving messages and not getting a reply.
Anyway, I got an ultimatum tonight to sort it out.
My dad is the kind of person who, when in possession of a remote control handset with only one button on it, is quite likely to forget which button he has to press. Therefore, the chances of him being able to access voicemail and do the necessary maintenance on his inbox are roughly the same as those of winning the Lottery.
So I’ve had it disabled.