BT6500 phone - a question or two

Angilion

Angilion

Angilion

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This looks ideal for me, so I'm suspicious. Maybe I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth.

From the details on BT's site, it looks like you can just leave the phone in silent mode all the time. All calls go silently to the built-in answering machine except for calls from numbers you've whitelisted. The main talk is about the ability to block all calls with number withheld or openly from other countries (I write "openly" because it's apparently easy to fake a UK origin), but it seems to me that the silent mode is far more important. Mass blocking is a crude technique that will probably result in calls being blocked that you don't want to block, but silent screening and whitelisting seems ideal. Whitelist people you want to be able to phone you, silently screen everything else.

But everyone + dog is talking about the call blocking and nobody is mentioning the silent mode and whitelisting. Am I missing something important? Does anyone have this phone? Does silent mode work as I described above?

I would so like an end to all the nuisance calls waking me up (I work odd shifts and often sleep in the mornings) and this phone sounds ideal. £30 and a couple of quid a month for caller display if I don't make any phone calls. A bargain! Which makes me suspicious.
 
We've just got one of these handsets and the Do Not Disturb feature works exactly as you describe. You add numbers to your contacts, set them up as VIP numbers and then turn on Do No Disturb (which can be turned on or off or set to activate during a specified time). Calls from VIP numbers do not get blocked by the DND feature.

Here's a link to the user manual for the phone. Call control settings are explained from page 27 onwards: http://btsupport.custhelp.com/ci/fa...2LzEvdGltZS8xMzY1NTgzNDA3L3NpZC83S09jRGxubA==

We've not had a chance to test these features out yet as we're still waiting for BT to enable our caller ID.
 
Thanks. I couldn't find anything online from anyone who actually had one of the phones. Page after page of regurgitated press releases and pre-release snippets devoid of content.

The only fly in the ointment now is that I don't know if I can use BT's reminder calls with DND on. I phoned BT today and asked - when I eventually got to a person they didn't know. Not a big issue - I use it as a backup alarm clock in case my two alarm clocks fail at the same time, which might be a touch paranoid :)

6 week waiting list on these phones now. They greatly underestimated how many people want to not be disturbed.
 
BT Cordless Phones are terribly unreliable in my experience had several replaced under warranty, begrudgingly accepted an 'Upgraded' BT Model as a replacement as they had stopped making the one I had and that thing got replaced another 4 times until I had enough and bought a Philips.
 
I have to agree with doofer, in my experience the phones are very poor quality. I distinctly remember in an old job, the manager flinging the phone because it didn't work properly.

I buy nothing but Panasonic now and they have all been absolutely excellent.
 
MagicBoy said:
6 week waiting list? They're in stock at my local catalogue store. Tempted to get one now...
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Are they actually in stock, as in physically at the shop for you to take right away? Catalogue shops have been known to sell things they don't actually have and just hope they can get them before customers complain too much about the delay in delivery.

Hmm...£35 at Argos, £30 from BT. Worth the extra if they actually have them in stock.

BT are explicitly stating an expected 6 week waiting list because demand is vastly higher than expected and there are problems with their suppliers. It looks like an initial batch of phones was delivered to various vendors. BT sold all theirs in days. Maybe some vendors have some left...and maybe they're "selling" them now even though they haven't got any and hoping that they can acquire some more before customers who've paid for them get annoyed enough to want a refund.
 
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doofer said:
BT Cordless Phones are terribly unreliable in my experience had several replaced under warranty, begrudgingly accepted an 'Upgraded' BT Model as a replacement as they had stopped making the one I had and that thing got replaced another 4 times until I had enough and bought a Philips.
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I already have a landline phone that works perfectly and has done for years. The only flaw is that all the buttons are now completely blank because the symbols on them have worn off.

I'm not buying a BT6500 because I want a higher quality phone. I'm buying it because it does something no other phone does. It's irrelevant how good phones from Philips are when they don't do what I want from a phone. Bosch make good drills, but why care about that if what you want is a vacuum cleaner?
 
Angilion said:
I already have a landline phone that works perfectly and has done for years. The only flaw is that all the buttons are now completely blank because the symbols on them have worn off.

I'm not buying a BT6500 because I want a higher quality phone. I'm buying it because it does something no other phone does. It's irrelevant how good phones from Philips are when they don't do what I want from a phone. Bosch make good drills, but why care about that if what you want is a vacuum cleaner?
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But what is the point in having a phone that has the features you want if you may not even end up receiving calls due to the phone breaking and you not knowing?

Your argument works both ways and Doofer was simply giving advise to you.
 
Angilion said:
Thanks. I couldn't find anything online from anyone who actually had one of the phones. Page after page of regurgitated press releases and pre-release snippets devoid of content.

The only fly in the ointment now is that I don't know if I can use BT's reminder calls with DND on. I phoned BT today and asked - when I eventually got to a person they didn't know. Not a big issue - I use it as a backup alarm clock in case my two alarm clocks fail at the same time, which might be a touch paranoid :)

6 week waiting list on these phones now. They greatly underestimated how many people want to not be disturbed.
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No worries buddy..you can always rely on OcUK :) If there's anything else you need to know then just let me know.

If the BT reminder service proves to be an issue then the phone itself has an alarm feature so you can just set that instead.
 
One poster saying he had four replaced under warranty isn't statistically valid.

BT don't make their own phones - they're contracted out to an OEM. Before we went VOIP at work we used to buy a few BT DECT phones and they were mostly Siemens manufactured. Other than batteries wearing out after a few years they gave very little trouble. May have changed though...
 
BuToNz said:
People still use/have house phones? Say wha?
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You need a phone line for DSL services. If you have a phone line why would you not have a phone connected to it? At the very least I use ours for 0800/0808 dialling, even if I now use a mobile phone for chargeable calls.
 
Don't get me wrong, we've got a phone connected. It's just never used nor has it ever occurred to me to buy a 'fancy' one.
 
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