My own landline number phoned me on my landline and now line is engaged

[MJP]

OK this is going to sound confusing but bear with me. 

I was converted to digital voice about 3 weeks ago. 

I have a BT synergy Dect phone with answer machine and three further synergy handsets. 

I connected via a digital voice adapter. 

all has worked correctly until today. 

I heard my landline ring but I was outside and didn’t get to phone fast enough it appears both my answer machine and voicemail kicked in, as my base station showed one message, however there was no message left.

on picking up the handset I have a broken tone but it’s the engaged tone not the waiting voicemail tone.

I cannot ring out on my landline, however can receive a call on it. I tried with my mobile.

on checking the display on my handset to see who rang me it was actually  my own landline number. So somehow my landline called my landline and is now holding on to the line . 

I’ve reset the hub I’ve also turned my phone off and back on by unplugging the master base station, but still get the engaged one preventing me from phoning out. 

the diagnostics bit tells me there is no issue. 

any ideas  other than trying to find a way of speaking to a human being 

[jac_95]

Hi MJP,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the Community.

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[iniltous]

It’s usual for scammers to ‘spoof’ the number they are calling from to disguise the country they are in, they can spoof any phone number they want , and change this spoofed number at will after each scam call if that’s their choice , it’s seems to be relatively common that the number they spoof  is the same number they  are calling , presumably they figure if that scam call attempt  goes unanswered , and the recipient  uses 1471 later to check the number of the last incoming call they had , they will be advised that the number that called them was their own number , and they will probably not realise it was a scam and just write it off as one of those odd things …..it may be that , may be something else.

[MJP]

That’s a point I hadn’t thought of that.

Still got the issue of my line being engaged and unable to ring out though . I’m in chat with someone niwv

[iniltous]

Another scammer trick  is to hold the line , stopping the called person making an outgoing call , however if you hang up ,even if caller doesn’t , there is a function invoked , ‘called party clear’ where the system times out the incoming call and force clears it ,  allowing the called party to use their ‘line’ again ….if the person who made the call either inadvertently or deliberately try’s to hold the line , stopping outgoing calls being made this happens automatically provided the called party hangs up …the time this called party clear kicks in was reduced a few years ago , so if it’s more than 10 mins , then chances are this hasn’t happened .

if there is some other issue that isn’t the caller deliberately not clearing down the call , power cycling may well sort issues  this out .

[MJP]

All sorted now. I spoke on line with a technical guide. 

reset hub remotely and reset digital adapter remotely neither cleared the problem. 

However I have an old corded phone which I tried plugging into the adapter, still had engaged tone but plugging into the hub directly I was able to get a dial tone and dial out using this. But connecting my DECT phone this way was still giving me an engaged tone and no dial out. 

I re plugged the corded phone into the hub , dialled 1571 , the voicemail was from BT reminding me I’ve been transferred to digital voice and to set up my smart hub, even though I’ve already done this. 

I deleted that message and lo and behold my DECT phone was then working correctly whether connected to hub or to the adapter. 

Still a mystery, maybe more so as it appears it’s a call from BT and not a scam call that mirrored my landline number 🤔