Why is BT Digital Voice so bad? - now on my 3rd replacement handset

[licquorice]

Absolute utter nonsense. 

[garybs29]

DV has been working fine for me for a few years now. Me thinks it's the usual on these things....

[riley01]

Can anyone advise me why my DV phone suddenly decides mid conversation that it cannot find the hub that is 12 feet away? It then decides I cannot make a call while it again downloads software. I though new technology was meant to be better than old but I am thinking I wish I could have my old reliable phone back. It never did any of those things and the audio quality was as good

[riley01]

Right now I would really rather have my old technology it was far more reliable than this pile of rubbish they have insisted I have. Poor reliability and cuts out at random- and yes I do use plenty of technology in case you decide to get cheeky and insulting.

[iniltous]

DV phones are DECT , not WiFi , so no different to any other ‘cordless’ home telephone, presumably you had a ‘regular’ telephone of your own before you switched to DV (cordless or corded ) if you did , simply plug your previous owned phone ( if corded )  or your ‘old’ phone base station ( if cordless ) directly into the hub phone socket  and ditch the ‘free’ DV phone or adapter .

If by any some small chance you actually bought the DV phone yourself rather than having it provided for free , return it for refund, problem solved .

[Anonymous]

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@riley01wrote:

Can anyone advise me why my DV phone suddenly decides mid conversation that it cannot find the hub that is 12 feet away? It then decides I cannot make a call while it again downloads software. 

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Change the batteries.

[HBW]

We are in a similar situation.

Just over 2 years ago we re-contracted with BT and took up their offer to go to Digital Voice. The new contract gave us a Smart Hub2, 2 BT Digital Voice Handsets, 2 BT WiFi Disks that were supposed to improve WiFi coverage in the house (they didn't and they kept losing connection to the hub) and a Mobile Phone Dongle in case broadband went down (amazingly that did work).

Sadly BT Digital Voice Equipment is not fit for purpose!

I might be in the middle of a call, today is an example, waiting on the line for a call centre to answer (approx12 mins on hold) and then the handset advised me that it was

Searching for Hub and
Synchronising Handset Data

I have lost count of the number of times this has occurred, today's experience has been over a dozen times.

The software appears to be up to date on both the handset and the hub.

We have had the Hub replaced twice, the 2 DV handsets 3 times and the Disks at least twice. What does BT know and why don't they acknowledge that there are 'issues' with their equipment?

We have had no noticeable outages with the broadband service, a constant 70-73.5 Mbps (but broadband service wouldn't affect the DECT service inside the house and in any case the DV handsetset dropout occur while 'on line'.

Our '13 year-old' Panasonic DECT system with 4 handsets (inc answering machine) has never (and still hasn't) let us down.

The suggestion that users of BT DV handsets revert to their 'old DECT' phones is a nonsense and BT know it.

Come on BT/EE get your act together and supply us with a product that actually works and is reliable!

[chrisjp]

"My advice - Bin BT digital voice, its a dead duck."

It's not BT DV that the dead duck - it's the free DECT connected phones or their batteries that aren't working.
Whatever you had plugged into you old analogue phone master socket which presumably worked fine, just needs to be plugged into the green socket on the back of the Smarthub 2. It'll then carry on working just fine.

[chrisjp]

"Our '13 year-old' Panasonic DECT system with 4 handsets (inc answering machine) has never (and still hasn't) let us down.
The suggestion that users of BT DV handsets revert to their 'old DECT' phones is a nonsense and BT know it."

If you plug your old Panasonic base station into the geen socket on the Smarthub 2 it will work just as reliably as it has always done. So why is it "a nonsense" to suggest this?
If the free BT DV handsets persistently give trouble, why persist in trying to use them? It may just be the batteries that are no good but, if you don't want to buy new ones, just ditch these free items.
None of these issues are anything to do with digital voice, which I've found works just as reliably as the old analogue phone system.

[HBW]

I afraid you've missed the point.

BT had replaced the DV handsets on 3 separate occasions - all for the same reason.

Perhaps one might have thought that BT might take a moment to wonder why one customer had compalined about  the reliability of the DV phone so many times and looked a little closer? Clearly no one at BT bothered and have probably 'recycled' perfectly good handsets, when it looks as if the batteries might be the issue. I have replaced the batteries (cheap ones from Lidl) in both handsets and so far, touch wood , there have been no disconnects, sync or searching for hub issues.

Surely BT should have investigated the battery performance aspect of the handset if there had been other complaints?As a BT shareholder I am not impressed with the waste of time (a couple of engineer visits) and money wasted.

As you say, the DV voice quality/service and some of the handset features are good but the overall impression of DV has probably been spoiled by  a battery reliabiliuty issue.