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Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Pulmonaria — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 10:41:32 GMT

Please can someone tell me how I can escalate and accelerate a problem with BT.

My elderly (81yrs) father who is frail and has many illnesses (hospitalised twice in November) moved to an assisted living flat 7 days ago. He relies on his landline and it should have been a simple home move . However, he can only make outgoing calls. He cannot receive incoming calls (except from people on EE mobile). He is terrified that doctor, district nurse, etc. won’t be able to get in touch. I cannot call him - but I ave been going round to his flat every day – but I need to be away for work all next week. I won’t be able to get in touch. We are desparate to get this fixed. I have spent hours on the phone with the BT call centre over the last week . I have seen the problem of not receiving incoming calls mentioned many times on this Forum, so you would think it would be something BT would be aware of and able to sort out relatively quikly. But it is going nowhere.

Over the last 6 days I have spoken to 6 different people at BT Call centre who have all told me different things (e.g. - order is on the wrong line (to old house); it is number porting issues; it is broadband issue and needs engineer to cabinet (Broadband is working fine), it is DV issue). During this period, a BT engineer showed up at the wrong house (Dad’s hold house) which we didn't know anything about in advance. After which I got an email asking me to book an engineer, which a call centre staff person then said I didn’t need to respond to. Right hand doesn't know what left hand is doing, everyone is telling me something different, and nothing is moving forwards. I need one person to take hold of it and sort it out. How can I escalate it to a manager?

(Before Dad’s move, I also had major problems with the order. BT made some error with the order, they had to cancel it, and then the cancellation got stuck in the system – it took 6 phone calls between 3-17th January to get it moving again. With different people telling me different things).

Because Dad is so concerned about having a phone service, his whole move was organised around a date that BT gave us for doing the home move. This was the 20th Jan - and they have totally failed him. He has been a BT customer all his adult life.

Thank you for any help

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

jac_95 — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 10:42:39 GMT

Hi Pulmonaria,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the Community.

This is an automated response as I can see you have a question about BT’s Digital Voice service. Rather than waiting for a response from the Community, you may find an answer to your question by using the search bar on the Community homepage. We also have a thread that contains a wealth of info related to BT’s Digital Voice, click this link to take a look, Digital Voice FAQs.

Got some questions or want to learn more about BT’s Digital Voice rollout? BT are running localised events as part of the regional rollout of Digital Voice - Click here to view the Digital Voice events

To learn more about the nationwide change to this Internet based voice service visit landlinesgo.digital

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Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Keith_Beddoe — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 10:49:28 GMT

@Pulmonaria

Welcome to this customer to customer help forum for BT Residential phone and broadband customers.

The only BT employees on this forum are the moderators, who no longer have account access.

I have asked one of them to post here with advice.

Is your father registered with BTs priority service?

https://www.bt.com/help/landline/getting-set-up/help-people-with-impairments-or-with-particular-needs/i-rely-on-my-service-and-need-it-repaired-urgently

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

imjolly — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 10:49:52 GMT

this may help and is your father registered as vulnerable https://www.bt.com/help/here-for-you

when your father moved is he now on digital voice where the phone connects to the green socket on back of BT HUb?

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Pulmonaria — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 10:59:27 GMT

Thank you for replying and for contacting a moderator.

The link you sent for registering as vulnerable doesn't seem to work - I get a Secure Connection Failure message - Error code: PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR. . I also get it with the link the next reply below also included - so maybe there is a problem with these BT Webpages.

In my last phone call with BT yesterday I filled out a Welfare Case form with the person at the call centre. But after doing this she said she would call me back within 4 hours (which would have been about 3pm yesterday). Needless to say, that didn't happen.......

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Pulmonaria — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:01:49 GMT

Hello - thanks for replying.

The link you suggested 'here for you' doesn't seem to work. I get same error message as for link previous poster sent.

Yes, the phone line is plugged into green port at back of hub - but thanks for suggesting.

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

imjolly — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:40:10 GMT

the links work so it must be your device try changing to a different browser - it works on pc using chrome and edge

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

licquorice — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:48:49 GMT

Link works fine for me

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Pulmonaria — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:49:02 GMT

Thanks. I tried Firefox and Safari on my Mac and the links don't work on either of them.

He is already hopefully registered as a Welfare case - although I didn't hear back from the call centre about the action they would take based on this as I was promised.

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Pulmonaria — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:56:07 GMT

I just tried to download Chrome for Mac - but my operating system is too old. Also I can't use Edge on Mac. I tried to get to the 'here for you' page by simply googling it - but it gives me the same error. So it doesn't look like those BT pages are accessible for me given the age of my computer and operating system.

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Pulmonaria — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 15:18:15 GMT

I’ve been able to look at the link now. I really appreciate you sending it , but my situation is too urgent for this. The form needs a doctor to sign it off. I am away all next week and there is no one to take my Dad to a doctor.

I am hoping that the welfare case I raised yesterday with a call centre staff essentially did the same thing as that form. Do you know it if does? However, I have not heard back from the call centre to confirm that the welfare case has been accepted and what steps the welfare team would be taking, although they said they would call back ‘within 4 hours’ - and that was more than 24 hours ago. I do not trust call centre staff to be able to sort anything out, I’m sorry to say, based on the absolute run-around they have been giving me. Which is why I would like to know if anyone in this forum knows how things can be escalated to a single BT manager who can take charge.

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

RIC9380 — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 19:11:06 GMT

Have you raised a complaint?

Make a complaint | BT Help

RIC9380

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Peter_W — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:56:53 GMT

Hey there @Pulmonaria.

Welcome to the BT Community Forums, and thanks for taking the time to explain everything that's being happening with your Father's line.

I'm keen to make sure you get the best support possible here, so I've sent you over a private message.

Peter

Re: Vulnerable, ill, elderly man unable to receive calls for a week

Jane2018 — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 12:46:01 GMT

When my landline was down for a fault of 4 weeks I had considered getting a call forward put on but I couldn't do that myself as I had not set up the phone or message collection like that. However I think I could have done had I called BT about it (I don't call on principle as my time is too valuable). May be you could buy your father a pay as you go mobile with very large buttons for the elderly and call BT and ask them to forward the landline calls to the new mobile number. My theory here is that your father's doctor and other medical staff then would have calls to pick up from there.

Secondly what I had hoped to do was pick up calls on another phone number from the answering on my broken landline although until the fault I had not set that up. It is now set up in case mine break again.