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Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

Charles7 — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:50:55 GMT

We needed to get broadband installed for my mother-in-law in Dartmouth so booked to have fibre installed for the first time.

Because she's never had internet before, BT needed to shut down her old account (just telephone) line and to create a new account (with phone and broadband).

When openreach went to the house to install the fibre, they refused to complete the job because the house is listed. They left without turning the phone line back on.

After many hours trying to get help from BT, we are no further forward after 2 weeks. My vulnerable mother in law is 96 and has Alzheimer's. She has no phone, no internet and no account. BT have closed both the old and the new accounts down.

We have opened a complaint but even that has not made a difference.

I see other people have been helped by people in this community in this situation.

How do you get BT's attention in this type of situation? How do you get them to take ownership of an issue such as this?

Help would be appreciated.

Charles

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

WSH — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:02:03 GMT

If you have not done so already, try the team listed here. In my experience they are very good.

https://www.bt.com/content/dam/bt-plc/assets/documents/about-bt/policy-and-regulation/our-governance-and-strategy/codes-of-practice/customer-complaints-code/complaints-code.pdf

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

Charles7 — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:50:28 GMT

Thanks for the response.

We believe that team has already got the complaint but even they haven't called back!

Do we go to Age UK? Citizen's Advice?

How would BBC Watchdog contact BT?

Charles

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

WSH — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:56:11 GMT

That team are the next level up from the help desk guys. It may be worth contacting them directly. It would be very unusual for them not to respond.

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

imjolly — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 20:12:40 GMT

You should email the consumer resolutions team in link posted by @WSH @ if you have not done that already. They are executive level complaints and you will get action and reply

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

chrisjp — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 21:46:57 GMT

I don't understand why BT-Openreach don't refrain from turning off a copper landline service until a new fibre installation is installed and verified as working.
Instead they do the reverse - shut down the landline and then hope the fibre installation will be successful. If it's not, then it seems impossible to re-instate the copper service.

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

WSH — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 21:56:47 GMT

@chrisjp They did with mine. The installer did want to "clip the copper cable" but I told him to leave it intact until I was sure everything was working. Which is what he did. Out of curiosity, I did check a few times and it was several more weeks before the old phone line went dead. The old line wasn't working but there was some sort of tone on it.

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

Charles7 — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 06:46:44 GMT

We were amazed that they cut the copper before putting in the fibre too. It seemed madness. The openreach engineer didn't try very hard to put fibre in. He could have followed the same route into the house as the copper wire. It is very frustrating. We live in London and were not there when openreach came.

On one of our numerous calls (plural) to the BT service centres (plural), somebody mentioned SOGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access) – broadband-only over copper FTTC. Why bother offering fibre when that is available?

Big, faceless, uncoordinated, outbound only. Adding broadband should have been the easiest thing!

Re: Vulnerable mother disconnected and no coherent response from BT!

Peter_W — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:19:38 GMT

Thanks for reaching out to us about this, @Charles7

I'm keen to ensure we're doing all we can to support your mother here, so I've just sent you over a private message so we can look into things further.

Speak soon,

Peter