BT left me with no landline for 43 days! Telecom giant’s digital switchover is leaving readers like Trevor cut off

Scores of BT customers are having their old phone lines cut off for days because of problems with the telecom giant’s switchover to digital landlines. 

In some cases seen by Money Mail, users have been unable to make landline calls for a month or longer.

Trevor Mumby endured 43 days without a landline or internet this autumn after BT provided him with an ‘upgrade’.

The 72-year-old retired car demonstrator, from Ramsey in Cambridgeshire, and his wife, Margaret, 68, were cut off in September as part of a ‘free upgrade to fibre’.

Trevor says: ‘Engineers made a couple of visits, but could only scratch their heads because they said the signal to the house was working. Yet the phone lines inside and the internet hub were dead.’

Cut off: Trevor Mumby (pictured) endured 43 days without a landline or internet this autumn when BT provided him with a free ‘upgrade’ to a digital line

He adds: ‘What followed were many painful hours of patiently hanging on the end of a separate mobile phone waiting to speak to a real person. They would always promise the problem would be sorted but, of course, it never was.’

After six weeks, Trevor says: ‘I gave up and my daughter posted the problem on social media. 

These big corporations do not like bad publicity — even if they do not care about the customer — because just like magic our broadband and phone line were reconnected in a couple of days.’

Trevor said BT offered £9.17 a day in compensation for the period when his line was down — plus two more for good measure. But, to add insult to injury, he still had to pay a monthly £53 fee for a non-existent service.

Unfortunately, his is not an isolated experience.

In the next couple of years, the Digital Voice programme will move ten million BT customers from traditional copper-wire phone lines to fibre cables that use new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to make calls.

In total, 29 million homes must make the change by 2025. Phone numbers should not be affected by the switch, BT says.

But Money Mail has been contacted by countless BT customers complaining of similar issues with the Digital Voice switch.

Frances Peake (name changed), from Bedfordshire, was cut off in February last year. As part of the deal, BT sent her a £200 hub into which she could plug her old phone. 

In theory, this should have enabled her to use her old phone as before, because it includes sockets for both traditional analogue phones and new digital handsets. 

The other options are to plug the old analogue phone into a £20 adapter or to buy a new £30 digital phone.

However, when 44-year-old Frances, a freelance financial co-ordinator, tried to use the new hub, nothing worked — including the old landline phone.

Frances, who has two sons aged six and 12, says: ‘I rang BT every couple of days. It had an online chat service that drove me crazy as it was no help at all.

‘When I got through to a real person, they would promise me an engineer would come out — but no one did. On three separate days I stayed in waiting for a person who never turned up.’

After a full month — 31 days — Frances rang BT to cancel her contract. She says: ‘I was furious, as I had been tearing my hair out with two children crying because they could not use the internet.

‘They let me cancel immediately without having to give notice — I think they were sick and tired of me bothering them all the time.

‘I signed up to Sky and just two weeks later had a new fully working phone line and broadband.’

Digital switch: In the next couple of years, the Digital Voice programme will move ten million BT customers off traditional copper-wire phone lines to fibre cables 

BT customer Daphne Brown, 69, of Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, regrets signing up to a new BT phone and broadband package at the end of September — as it resulted in her family being stuck six weeks without a working landline. 

Daphne, who is married to retired farmer John, 78, says she was sent a new hub in the post: ‘We plugged it in and it didn’t work, so we packed it away.

‘Then, in October, text messages started to arrive saying our home phone line was being switched to digital in a few days’ time — and if we did not use the new hub, our phone line would be cut off.

‘Despite numerous phone calls to BT we could not get the new hub to work. Later, both the phone and broadband went dead.’

Daphne said she spent 42 days without either a landline or broadband service until BT sent an engineer to her home at the start of December.

She says: ‘We never asked for Digital Voice — in fact, we did not want it. The experience was an absolute nightmare.’

Daphne is also bemused as to why BT has set itself a two-year deadline to the end of 2025 to get all ten million of its customers switched over to digital, believing the rush to switch is causing problems like hers.

When making the BT switch, customers should be offered a £20 adapter for free. This allows traditional phones to be plugged into a broadband socket to work. You should also be offered £7 off a new £30 digital phone.

BT also provides back-ups for customers who would be left without the means to phone the emergency services in the event of a power cut. These should be provided for free to vulnerable customers, which can include those with no mobile phone reception.

Services include an £85 power-pack with batteries that should last at least four hours in a power cut. There are also £80 hybrid phones, that switch to mobile reception signal if there is no power or broadband, and last a day.

Last week, BT was forced to halt plans to force vulnerable customers who rely on health pendants to make the switch, following a campaign by Money Mail to offer people more support.

Often these health pendants stop working after the digital switch, and so cannot automatically contact emergency services when pressed.

BT says: ‘Customers are contacted at least four weeks in advance before making the switch, to ensure they are ready to move to Digital Voice. 

‘For most customers, the switch will be as simple as plugging their existing phone into the back of their broadband router. We encourage customers with any issues, questions or concerns to get in touch.’

The telecoms giant says that in a power cut or if broadband goes down, customers who are able to should use their mobile as an alternative to their landline.

You can contact BT on 0330 1234 150. If you want to speak to BT staff for help, then first press ‘option one’, followed by ‘option one’ again, and finally press ‘option five’.

• Have you been cut off during the BT Digital Voice switchover? If so, email [email protected]

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk