This topic

Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 03:10:02 GMT

3 months ago, my 97 year old mother who is virtually blind and has dementia, accepted that a care home would provide her with the best around the clock support. Up until then she lived alone, but depended heavily on her (PSTN) landline phone and the emergency assist necklace that uses the phone line. As an account manager for her account, I phoned BT and worked through their moving home process. I asked for the (copper cable) landline that was already in her room to be enabled. Disconnect the landline at her previous bungalow and, because she was only moving less than a mile in distance, I asked them to transfer her existing phone number.

It took BT, 4 weeks to connect a pre-existing line for an existing customer of 30+ years, who they ought to treat as vulnerable (but Christmas/NewYear probably exaggerated the delay). And I was surprised towards the end of this wait, to learn they were converting her to Digital Voice, closing her prior account and treating her like a new customer and they were sending a Smart Hub2 to a near blind 97 year old with dementia!.

So I installed The Smart Hub 2 in accordance with the instructions, and plugged the DECT analogue answer phone in to the back of the Smart Hub 2 again as per their instructions. (at 97 she has zero understanding or use for this “’new fangled internet” stuff – she is a digital voice only user.)

That was 2 months ago – the good news is it has worked for nearly all of the last 2 months for outbound phone calls. But for pretty much all of that 2 months, other people phoning her from their landlines get number unobtainable or the call just goes dead after dialling. Strangely most people are able to phone her OK if they phone via their UK mobile phone.

Fault reporting , escalating and diagnostics has recently been more challenging because I have had to be abroad (in Canada) for a few months. To further compound the failings, if I use a landline from here in Canada via a low cost VOIP transatlantic phone call provider all I get is a Canadian message saying that the (UK) number I have dialled “is not assigned”. Similarly, when my brother who lives in Italy tried to phone his mother from his Italian landline he gets a similar “number not assigned” message in Italian.

To date, I have done 3 online chat sessions with BT technical support; first 2 chats took over 1 hour each – the last chat 3 days ago took 2 hours. I have now concluded that online chats with BT technical support are pointless. They are clearly locked in to a set of diagnostics scripts and they seem incapable of getting past the step that involves them interrogating their Smart Hub 2 to confirm that there is a device (my Mums analogue phone) plugged in to it. All 3 chat sessions get stuck with them asking me to unplug the phone, leave it for X seconds then plug it in again. And or they suggest rebooting the smart Hub 2. Doing any of these things from 3000 miles away in Canada is challenging, fortunately the care home have been an amazing help – and very patient.

Status after the 3rd chat (and after 4 hours on their chat) – they again asked me to unplug it and replug it. At that point I remembered the definition of insanity “doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result”, I am not going to yet again ask the care home to unplug and replug the phone in to the hub and/or reboot it. Hasn’t provided a miracle cure the last 3 times – not likely to in future. I gave suggested some options: A. BT send an engineer, B. They revert her to PSTN or C. I close the account and get a loud, big button dumb cell phone instead (whilst seemingly attractive, with my mother’s lack of eyesight and dementia the ideal is she continue to use the analogue handset she is familiar with (anything new such as a digital voice handset or a new big cell phone who cause panic).

The above options were because after 3 chat sessions and repeated unplugging and rebooting that :

I concluded either The Smart Hub is faulty or The “plug your analogue phone in to the smart hub” is a myth, it feels like perhaps her analogue phone is not compatible with Digital Voice –( but BT have never suggested this possibility) or Digital Voice as a technology product is still just too buggy, too bleeding edge. In other words Digital Voice is not fit for purpose.

I’ve read somewhere that there might be a policy that BT will not force vulnerable customers over 70 years old (who use phone based emergency alert necklaces etc) to transfer to Digital Voice. Instead my call was escalated to the Tech support manager who said that they would send an engineer to visit to try to get the bottom of the issue, and having classified her as “urgent welfare” they assured me that the engineer would visit within the next 30 hours. Well 3 days later and no sign of the engineer, and they haven’t phoned the care home to make an appointment – so their promised action is looking unlikely.

To me these problems seem to be more about configuration and call routing – but I’m no expert – it is certainly hard to imagine how replugging the phone in to the smart hub is going to resolve “number not assigned” international calls. But incoming international calls are a nice to have – I just need UK landlines to be able to reliably call her.

During the 2nd chat session, they informed me that they had raised a compliant for this issue on my behalf. I wrongly thought that this would be some form of issue escalation, someone would pick it up, investigate, find the issue and get it working. Sadly it appears that a complaint is just a note on the account, it triggers zero action – BT is stuck on they can not “see” her phone plugged in to the Smart Hub when they interrogate the Smart Hub remotely.

I dread that I have to spend another hour on a chat session querying why they have failed to send out an engineer when they said they would, and more importantly get them to send the engineer. Perhaps if their own engineer visits then they will dig deeper that unplugging it.

I’ll be back in UK in a few weeks, then I will be able to phone them whilst standing beside the phone and jumping through the pointless hoops they request. But that will be the last chance because after that I’ll close the account and get a simple elderly cell phone for her because it feels like with BT dropping PSTN and transferring everyone to Digital Voice they are abandoning the elderly/vulnerable.

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

jac_95 — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 03:15:02 GMT

Hi HillClimb,

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.

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

If you have already looked for the answer to your question and have not found anything that can help, then please ignore this message. One of our Community members will be along shortly to help you further.

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

jac_95 — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 04:40:25 GMT

@HillClimb I've flagged this to moderators who can help.

Sounds like a number porting issue.

FYI, since September 5th 2023 there was a nationwide stop of new analogue phone (PSTN) orders hence probably why Digital Voice was supplied - more info on stop sell : https://landlinesgo.digital/stop-sell

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 13:59:40 GMT

Thanks @jac_95

I look forward to a moderator contacting me.....

On the lengthy chats, tech support wouldn't even consider the various use cases of inbound calls not connecting, they gave no indication of investigating number porting (or any other config) as possible causes of the issues I was reporting

Thanks for your help

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 14:19:10 GMT

News article from The Telegraph December 2023.

We did not request Digital Voice, we have never "Opted In", we were not informed that that was what they were forcing on us until immediately before they installed it in early January. No she is not a new customer, she has been with BT for 30+ years and Yes at the very start when I phoned the BT House Move team I mentioned her age and that she was moving in to a care home. I don't recall mention of her healthcare pendant - they never asked.

Whether it is PSTN or Digital Voice, I simply want a phone that works for both inbound and outbound, including emergency pendant connections, but so far online tech support aren't investigating deeply enough.

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

imjolly — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 14:48:00 GMT

@HillClimb

is your mother register here https://www.bt.com/help/here-for-you and here https://www.bt.com/content/dam/bt/help/including-you/BT_Free_Priority_Fault_Repair_Scheme.pdf

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

PaddyB — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 15:49:24 GMT

Hi @HillClimb,

Thank you for posting. I'm sorry to read about your mom's poor experience from she was switched to Digital Voice. I agree with @jac_95, it sounds like it is a porting issue that is stopping her from being able to receive all incoming calls. If you send me the details, I'll get this investigated.

I have sent you a private message with instructions on how to contact the team. You can access your messages via the envelope icon at the top right of the screen, or click on this link, Private messages

Thanks,

Paddy

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

chrisjp — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 17:27:52 GMT

It's good that the moderators are now getting involved but BT's "service" on this matter really is appalling.
It's clear that their Helpline staff are woefully under-trained and entirely reliant on scripts which they just go through mindlessly and repeatedly, even when these actions have repeatedly failed to solve the issue.
What is really needed is for the first agent that is contacted about an issue to "own" it until it is resolved, and be empowered to take up the issue with the appropriate experts within BT to get this resolution.
There appears to be no hope, however, that BT will adopt this approach, preferring to have a different agent answering each time you get in touch to tell them that your issue has not been resolved, so the cycle is just endlessly repeated. Dohh!!

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 01:18:00 GMT

@PaddyBthank you for the message - I have replied to your PM with the information you requested.

I look forward to someone investigating and resolving these issues.

Regards

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 01:20:17 GMT

@chrisjpbased upon all of the online chats with BT tech support to date - you are not wrong

It appears a moderator is now getting involved and I hope they can get this fixed

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 13:00:41 GMT

Moderators have been in touch, security info accepted and I've received a few messages identifying the suspected issues and the actions that have been requested that they hope will get it all working next week.

So fingers crossed 🙂

thanks

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

IanPenfold — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:16:17 GMT

Sadly you are not alone. My 92 years old in laws have been ported and left without service twice in recent weeks with no service since the 13th. I have been passed from pillar to post by the support teams who appear to have little grip on what needs to happen to restore the service and concerningly little appreciation of the urgency of doing so. This is simply staggering given that the problems appear to have existed since last year.

I sincerely hope that you receive help soon and if as a result you can provide me with a contact who can help me I would be extremely appreciative.

All the best

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

imjolly — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:18:22 GMT

@IanPenfold

I have replied to your own thread and ask mods to assist

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

IanPenfold — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:29:12 GMT

thanks

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 18:19:38 GMT

@IanPenfold I am pinning my hopes on the moderators here who have contacted me. The BT Online chats seemed to be blindly following scripts and were simply not actually listening to the faults my mother is suffering. The responses from moderators here give me hope, I can see from your thread that yours has been referred to the moderators too - so fingers crossed for both of us.

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

Jane2018 — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 19:49:36 GMT

This is very useful. It confirms to me (as I never like to queue or wait for anything) that I would never want to call for this kind of customer "assistance". These 1 and 2 hour calls are typical of companies wasting customer time and just reading from a script. If the answer after a vastly long call is reset it or plug it back in it seems a huge waste of everyone's time to make anyone endure a call of that length.

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

HillClimb — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:50:43 GMT

The messages I received from the Moderators said they hope to resolve the issues by Friday 22/3 latest, hopefully earlier.

I tried phoning from a Canadian Landline on Monday 18/3, whereas previously I would get a "number not assigned" message, now it works 🙂 🙂 🙂

I asked some other people in UK to phone from their landlines and as at Wednesday 20/3 they got through OK too - some of the others who previously weren't able to phone haven't fed back to me yet - but it appears to be a lot better - and WOW the response from the Mods here has been a 1000times better experience than the Online Chats - so many thanks to the Mods

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 15:03:13 GMT

Good to hear & yes, they do a cracking job.

But just bizarre that there is no escalation process within BT. Makes you wonder how many are unaware of this forum & are just left with unresolved issues?

Re: Digital Voice –for 97 year old vulnerable - 2 months and still not working

DanielS — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:26:00 GMT

Thank you so much for your kind words @HillClimb and @Anonymous. I'm very happy that this is now working for your Mum.

I'm going to send you a private message but wanted to update the Community in case anyone had something similar.

In this case, the number wasn't ported correctly but all tests showed that it had. Even speaking with our suppliers number porting team the issue wasn't found so I needed to escalate it. There is a specific team (ROBT team) that we need to contact by email when we suspect this issue and all else has failed. At first, they couldn't see a problem but after I contacted them again, they raised it with a team that they called the ORSI Team. That team then re-ported the number correctly for us. I am sorry that it took so long to get to this stage but I'm happy that this looks to have been fully sorted now.

Thank you

DanielS