If your helpline uses BT for your phone lines, uses volunteers or home workers please be very aware of the potential consequences of BT Call Connect.
This is the 1572 service that is supposed to capture ‘junk’ calls. It intercepts calls without your knowledge, and worse, has been placed on many lines without the knowledge or consent of the account holder. It looks, at first sight, to be a harmless if not useful service – to trap PIP and internet alert spammers etc BUT it captures withheld numbers without so much as a by your leave. And most helpline systems will deliver calls to agents using withheld numbers.
I thought I was getting ghost calls again – a phenomenon encountered once before when our calls got tangled accidentally with another helpline – when I realised the system was directing calls to my phone, which did not ring, and maintained a dial tone throughout. The system showed a short call of a few seconds and then went into wrap up. Our theory at first was that if we took ourselves off automatic wrap up because we were busy and wanted to catch calls in the queue, because we were so busy the system got a bit fuddled and caused this to happen. Moral, we thought, leave the system to work automatically, don’t interfere. Wrong, the moral was investigate further, discover BT Call Connect and get rid! To my horror it had dumped 258 helpline calls into this chasm in a couple of weeks!
To test if BT Connect is on any line that is used by your helpline follow the advice here
We also believe it is possible to switch it off through an individual phone by dialling 1572, selecting 2 to manage personal settings, then 2 to switch BT blacklist on or off and then 1 to switch it off.
We cannot test that as we got rid of it by placing a new order to delete it – which worked instantly.
Even if you don’t use BT please be aware of this as the other main telephony providers are sure to follow suit at some point.
A further point, if you do use homeworkers and they use Sky for their phone line, Sky include an answerphone service without asking AND it includes the carrier line number! So do make sure everyone is aware of this and you have a suitable policy in place.