Please help, landline down for elderly customer living alone

[af-12]

My Mothers phone line has gone down in the last 24 hours.  I just waited 30 minutes to speak to someone who then eventually tried to put me through to the Fibre to the Premises team, but all that happened was that I went back to the start again. Waited further 25 minutes and had to hang up.

The problem is that she's on her own and relies on the land phone as mobile signal is very poor. The account is my name.

The story is this :

Ordered phone and fibre 1 in December. Original phone number of 01633 xxxxxxx to be transferred from Talk Talk.

Was informed the original installation date of 25 Jan was being put back to 3 Feb.

Internet went live on 3 Feb. Account says the number allocated is 01633 xxxxxx, even though the original number was still working.

Received bill from Talk Talk. They say they have had no request from BT to cancel their service and transfer the number.

Looking at the bill paid today, looks like BT are charging for phone service starting in January, while internet from 3 Feb installation date.

And now today the phone doesn't work, no incoming or outgoing calls.   I need this fixed asap please, but cant get through. Also want it confirmed to Talk Talk the date it should have transferred and the original number applied to the account please.  Please help.

[imjolly]

Did you initially contact TT and tell them you were cancelling your contract or did you just go straight to BT Retail and place your order for phone and broadband and let BT contact TT about line take over?

[af-12]

Thanks for reply.

I had informed TT that I was cancelling on behalf of my mother. Had to do this as the broadband speed collapsed to under the 'guaranteed' level for more than 30 days, so under their terms we could cancel  at no charge whilst under contract.

But even though they put this on file, they say the service was in TT's words, 'not called for'.  At least they haven't billed for early cancellation (yet).

By the way, got through at last late yesterday and the main issue of no landline appears resolved.  My mother had asked to transfer her number during the application, but BT now said she has to have a new one on digital voice and the old one no longer works as of yesterday.  This was never explained though. 

[Keith_Beddoe]

@af-12 

The number that is still with TT, is in fact owned by BT Retail, so must have been ported from BT Retail to TT, sometime in the past. I saw the number before it was removed by a moderator, for security. I checked to see if it belonged to BT Retail.

Once the TT line is ceased, the number will return back to BT Retail, and if  the number was important to her, then you may be able to request a renumber, back to that number.

The reason a new number has to be issued, is that the old number has not been released by TT.

[iniltous]

If the phone service is now delivered over the broadband connection as ‘digital voice’ , the phone is connected to the broadband router ( smart hub ) not the old copper phone line socket....if the property is FTTP it’s quite possible that the phone is ‘DV’, has a phone been tried in the phone socket of the broadband router ?

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@af-12 

As @iniltous  has said, there is a phone socket on the back of the BT Smart Hub 2. It may be covered by a label which says "For Digital Voice Customers only".

If you remove the label, then the phone socket will be underneath, as shown in green below.

If the phone is plugged into that socket, then it should work.