Today we discovered that BT has no help option for a 100 yr old customer (our mum) who lives independently but relies on her BT landline for daily living and for her emergency needs (through a system that relies on her landline)
There is a major outage in her area this past 2 days. It showed on the BT system as aiming to be fixed at tea time on day 1. No further update on the system this morning so my morning was spent in trying to discover what was happening and how long it might take to fix it. Trying to discover this was a nightmare in itself - I used the chat option on the website and the agent wanted to take me through every step of their security system even asking for my direct debit details on a query as general as what was happening in the post code area where mum lives.
Eventually it was confirmed that there was a major fault which would take at least 4 more days to fix.
Concerned for her safety particularly in the event of an emergency we reached out to BT by phone to ask if they could provide any help for her as she is on the priority register. After a long discussion where they suggested her going onto digital voice (she hasn't got internet at all or mobile phone), they said they would provide a mobile phone free of charge for the period of the outage and I was transferred to someone who they told me would action this.
The person I was transferred to told me he only deals with paying contracts and wasn't able to provide the free mobile phone his colleague had offered
This was very disappointing service and we now dread the arrival of digital voice in her area. We can only imagine the confusion and fear this will cause for her.
I hope someone within BT is reading this and realises how such contradictory and unsatisfactory service causes loyal elderly customers to feel.
