My Dad has had issues with his land line for a while now. It started when BT put some new lines in a hole in the ground. After some heavy rain, the hole in the ground filled with water and my Dads phoned stopped working.
This repeated several times a year but recently it is happening more regularly.
A week ago, the same thing appears to have happened. My Dad reported it and an engineer came out. Only, this time the engineer entered by elderly Dads home and tutted and said it was his wiring that was at fault.
The engineer had a poke around and disabled my Dads phones.
The old man lives in a big old house, every room is used and there are three of them living together, him, my Mum and her carer stays. Every room virtually has a phone on the same extension.
The engineer then left leaving one phone in operation, a phone that was the furthest away from all them. After several days they were puzzled that no one was calling but there was a dozen voicemails. They don't use voicemail.
He asked that I call him, but he then discovered the one remaining phone in a corner of the house doesnt ring!!!
He got on the phone and the internet to arrange an engineer to come out and sort it. Whilst on the internet, he realised that there was no dialing tone on the phone. He discovered that while the computer was on, several hours - also prevented the phone from working.
I had to arrange the engineer attend and was told he would come on Monday 10th in the morning. Never arrived.
My Dad then had to arrange an engineer attend Tuesday the 11th in the afternoon - cancelled.
My Dad has now threated BT with a press release to the media informing them that two elderly people with a collective age of 174 years have been left with disabled telephones including a handset that is used in the bathroom, disabled pendants that are connected to Help the aged call centre and a disabled burglar alarm that chirps every minute to inform him it is no longer connected to the monitoring company. The monitoring company cannot get through because the phone doesnt ring, the pendants will not alert help the aged because they cannot talk to the plugin adapter. If one fell or they both fell ill, they would be reliant on a carer who is not there all the time. If they needed 999 they would not be able to call for an ambulance, all because a two bit engineer disabled 90% of my Dads phones and devices and marked in as complete on his job sheet.
I hope my Dad does send a press release, the red tops would love it. "Elderly couples phones disconnected by BT because engineer couldnt be bothered to fix the line". At least it wont read "Eldery couple die because BT disabled phones: Calls to 999 unheard!"
Disgusting customer service, a full and detailed report shall be submitted to the telephone ombudsman but I doubt it will help improve the poor customer service you have failed to deliver. Utterly unacceptable!
