Our new Digital Voice handset randomly and intermittently drops the first digit when dialling out, so we get a message saying 'local numbers are no longer supported'. It took us several frustrating days to work out what was happening. We reported this fault to BT who logged it as 'slow broadband' , 'fixed' it and closed the fault on the Fault Tracker. They have now re-opened it, but no one at BT seems to have come across this problem before.
Check the call logs for a failed call. If the leading zero is missing from the number shown there, I'd suspect the zero key on the handset is intermittent. Rather than trying to explain that on the phone, just tell them it won't power on & you've changed the batteries. They should send a replacement.
thanks for the advice. The mis-dialled calls do not show on our bill presumably because they go through to the recorded message about local calls not being supported any more. When we spot the misdial we have to 'hang up' and redial. I have tried and failed to open the back of the phone to look at the batteries - the phones came with batteries installed - and I do not want to pay for new batteries as we've only had the phone for a few weeks. It took about an hour on the phone after our old landline was disconnected with no help or advice about setting up Digital Voice to get someone to admit that we were eligible for 2 new Digital Voice phones and these were sent to us eventually. I will try to contact BT and ask for a new phone.
if the same problem occurs on both phones then very unlikely a key problem and more likely and other cause
does phone work correctly if you phone from your contacts list
Having heard nothing for a week about this, I contacted BT via the chat function and explained the issue at length. Initial response was that as the handsets go into sleep mode to save battery power, a replacement phone would just do the same thing, ie would have to be woken up by putting in a digit, cancelling that and then re-dialling! This seemed ludicrous and unacceptable to me. However, when I explained that it only happens with one handset, and may be a faulty battery (we've only had the phones 3 months), a replacement phone is being sent. I was also told that because of the time I had spent trying to fix this issue they would "waive the shipping costs"!!!! Thanks again for the help from the community and I hope this is the end of this issue.
Do you keep the affected handset on or off it's charging base?
I don't have DV but with my DECT phones, if lifted off the base it will respond to the first digit. If left off the base a screen saver will kick in & that does require a key press to wake it up. But that should be fairly obvious as the keypress just wakes the screen up & the digit dialled isn't displayed.