Help! Elderly disabled couple. No digital voice landline after 4 attempts by BT to start service.

[JamesTcat]

I would be very grateful if the mods could intervene with this one. It seems so stupid but it is understandably very stressful for my parents.

My parents are without their digital voice landline that is critical to contacting various medical care providers after 4 attempts by BT to start their service.

Their fibre install failed at the first attempt due to a lack of ports in the road outside their house and this seemingly has led to a problem connecting their digital voice line. After no comms from BT after Openreach failed to connect them we called and arranged a second appointment. 2 weeks later this second attempt successfully connected the fibre and got their broadband running.

The installer helpfully connected up their old cordless phone to the new router (via a mains plugin DECT adapter) but the digital voice service never started overnight as it was meant to. Again no comms from BT but we have called up every couple of days trying to understand what's going on. Since then we have gone through 2/3 rounds of new attempts to start the service which all take 3 working days each time and every time it doesn't work. All the customer service people have been helpful and considerate but essentially useless. Last attempt went to the 'Bridge case offline technical team' and we were given the impression that this ninja team would fix the problem but no luck. Now we're back to another attempt to start the service in 3 working days again.

How do we break this cycle? My parents are still paying for their previous broadband and landline (via copper) supplier in the hope that they will still be able to transfer their old number over so they're effectively paying twice for broadband and 2 numbers that they cannot use. They are on low income and pension credit and can ill afford this extra expense. This move was to supposed to save them money by moving onto a BT social tariff.

I know they could plug the phone back into the old socket (the old copper line will still be working) but they both have mobility issues and it is awkward to get to behind a heavy piece of furniture. They're also completely non technical and getting a bit frustrated, stressed and confused by all this. I live 200 miles away and if I drove there and plugged the phone  back into the old line, I'd then have to drive there again if BT do get the digital voice working again.

Any suggestions?

[licquorice]

Why would you need to drive 200 miles, do they not have any neighbours?

In the meantime I'll flag this to the mods to see if they can expedite things.

[JamesTcat]

Thank you.

I have suggested she could ask the neighbours. She says no. Partly she's making a point - this isn't her fault, so why should she have to ask someone a favour to come and fix it. Partly she's not being logical due to stress (not only down to this issue but also her own mobility issues and having to care for my increasingly difficult Father). She's also not technical so she doesn't really know what to ask them to do (although I could tell them if I had their phone number). It's a difficult situation. I will drive down there once it's sorted to get them properly set up.

[PaddyB]

Hi @JamesTcat,

Thank you for posting and welcome to the Community. I'm sorry if the activation of your Parents Digital Voice has been delayed. The cordless phone that's connected to the Hub, what happens when your parents try to use that phone. Do the get a dial tone, are they able to make outgoing calls or is the line totally dead? 

If a bridge case has been raised its unlikely to be a quick fix. In the meantime I would suggest getting a neighbour to help connect the phone back to old socket as it could be a few days before the Digital Voice issue has been fixed.

I can take a look at what is happening with the case. 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

[TimCurtis]

@JamesTcat 

I was going to make the same suggestion of plugging the phone back into the original socket as there's a good chance that it'll still be working.

[JamesTcat]

Thank you. I have replied to the private message. As far as I know the DV phone line is dead according to my mother. Obviously with a cordless phone you need to press the call button to be able to hear a dial tone and it is possible that my mother doesn't realise this and if I tell her what to do (which, as the landline isn't working, is usually via WhatsApp - which she doesn't really know how to use properly and doesn't turn her mobile on very often) she just gets flustered. We have tried calling the phone line (using both the new number shown in the tracked order and the old landline number that we hope will be ported over at some point). There's no response from the phone. MyBT still shows an active order for DV and the DV link in My Products returns an error. Multiple customer service calls (both from us to BT and calls from BT to report that there is no change) have told us that the problem is that the DV is not yet set up.