How to manage and use landline call features

Virgin Phone offers a wide variety of great features to save you time, money and effort.



What are landline call features?

Virgin Phone offers a wide variety of great features to save you time, money and effort. Some of these features are free, and some carry a small subscription charge. Take a look at our charges page for a list of costs. Note, some calling features don't work together. For more information please check our Virgin Phone guide.


Home phone features for withholding numbers

Want to withhold your phone number? Just dial 141 followed by the number you’re calling. That way, when you make a call, it won't display your number or reveal it if the person uses Last Number Recall.

Keeps your number private - every time you make a call. Ask our customer care team to set it up for you (even if you're ex-directory).

If you do want to leave your number, dial 1470 before you make the call.

Want to conceal the number of your last incoming call? Just use CLI erasure. Dial 1475 and when you hear a short tone, hang up.

If your own number is withheld, dial 1470 before dialling 1475. You'll get a call back within a minute. Pick up, dial 1471 and you'll find that the number that called has been replaced by "number withheld".

Blocks calls from withheld numbers. Call 150 from your Virgin home phone to set this up. Or call 0345 454 1111* from another line.


Home phone features for voicemail

Most Virgin Phone customers have a voicemail service and, the best thing is – it’s free! Head to our Virgin Phone guide to find out how to set up landline voicemail.

Go to the Virgin Phone guide

Access your messages from anywhere.


Home phone features for call management

Divert your calls to another number.

See how to set up call diversion.

Know when someone’s trying to get through when you're on the phone.

Bar different types of outgoing calls.

Find out how to block nuisance calls.

Lets you see who's calling before you answer.

Lets three people chat at the same time.


Additional landline features

Engaged? Set up an automatic call to ring you back when the line is free.

The perfect shortcut for calling family and friends.

Got an early morning start or something you don’t want to forget? Use the reminder call.

Need a regular alarm at a certain time, on a certain day? You can set up multiple reminder calls for any day you want. Find out how using our Virgin Phone guide.

Find out the number of the last person you were called by.


Why are my home phone features not working?

If your call feature has worked before on your current Virgin Media home phone or if you have no dial tone, there may be an issue with your service. So it’s worth checking our Service status page for up to date information on known issues. We’ll also advise on whether you need an engineer appointment.

Check my service status

Virgin Media Caller Display is included in your phone package as standard so all you'll need to use the service is a compatible phone.

Got a compatible phone?

To use Caller Display you’ll need a compatible Caller Display phone or Caller Display unit (look for the British Standards Mark) and ideally one that meets multi-standard Caller ID. Old Caller Display phones and units (in particular pre-1999 sets) may not be able to receive Caller Display from a cable line. Check the box or user guide to see if the unit is dual network capable. Units that are dual network capable should work without any issues.

The vast majority of current Caller Display phones or Caller Display unit are compatible on Virgin Media network. On some phones you might need to set up the Caller Display.

If your call barring feature isn’t working at all, or isn’t working as you expect, here’s a couple of things to check.

  1. Are you subscribed to call barring? Call barring isn’t one of the free features you get with Virgin Phone, so you must subscribe to get it. Also, please remember that it can take up to 24 hours from the time you subscribe to a service for it to activate, so please wait and check again if it’s less than 24 hours since you subscribed.

  2. Check what call barring option you have set up, you can dial *#34# from your Virgin Media home phone. If this doesn’t work it may be that you’re in the Red Zone for call barring. Each customer is in a different call barring zone, to find out which one you’re in, dial 1765 from your Virgin Media home phone.

  3. Now you know which zone you’re in, and what call barring level you have, here are the options:

  • If your call barring isn’t set up as you want, check out our phone guide, and look for how to set up call barring to a different level for your call barring zone.

  • If your call barring is set up as you want, but you don’t think it is working correctly, check out our phone guide, and see if you have two features set up that don’t work together.

  • If you still think that call barring isn’t working correctly give us a call. Also, please remember that call barring isn’t available in certain regions.

In some regions if Voicemail is active on the account and your call is answered by our Voicemail service, then unfortunately dialing 1471 will not announce the last calling number. If this service has worked before on your current home phone, there may be a fault with your service. Check your Service Status to look for any issues on your home phone.

If you have call waiting active on your account, you’ll need to deactivate this feature before you can activate call divert.


Is your phone compatible?

Before enabling call features, just follow these few steps to make sure you’re ready to go:

  • It needs to be to a touch tone phone to get our calling features.

  • Has it got the *, # and Recall (R) buttons? You’ll need these too.

  • If your phone can switch between tone and pulse dialling, set it to MF or DTMF or Tone.

  • You’ll also need to make sure it’s set to Time Break Recall (TBR)

Not sure where these buttons are? Have a look on the bottom or side of the phone’s base, or look through the manufacturer’s manual that came with your phone.

*Call costs may vary