In other words Digital Voice is not fit for purpose. I concluded either The Smart Hub is faulty or The “plug your analogue phone in to the smart hub” is a myth, it feels like perhaps her analogue phone is not compatible with Digital Voice –( but BT have never suggested this possibility) or Digital Voice as a technology product is still just too buggy, too bleeding edge. The above options were because after 3 chat sessions and repeated unplugging and rebooting that : ![]() I close the account and get a loud, big button dumb cell phone instead (whilst seemingly attractive, with my mother’s lack of eyesight and dementia the ideal is she continue to use the analogue handset she is familiar with (anything new such as a digital voice handset or a new big cell phone who cause panic). ![]() Hasn’t provided a miracle cure the last 3 times – not likely to in future. At that point I remembered the definition of insanity “doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result”, I am not going to yet again ask the care home to unplug and replug the phone in to the hub and/or reboot it. Status after the 3rd chat (and after 4 hours on their chat) – they again asked me to unplug it and replug it. Doing any of these things from 3000 miles away in Canada is challenging, fortunately the care home have been an amazing help – and very patient. And or they suggest rebooting the smart Hub 2. All 3 chat sessions get stuck with them asking me to unplug the phone, leave it for X seconds then plug it in again. They are clearly locked in to a set of diagnostics scripts and they seem incapable of getting past the step that involves them interrogating their Smart Hub 2 to confirm that there is a device (my Mums analogue phone) plugged in to it. I have now concluded that online chats with BT technical support are pointless. To date, I have done 3 online chat sessions with BT technical support first 2 chats took over 1 hour each – the last chat 3 days ago took 2 hours. Similarly, when my brother who lives in Italy tried to phone his mother from his Italian landline he gets a similar “number not assigned” message in Italian. To further compound the failings, if I use a landline from here in Canada via a low cost VOIP transatlantic phone call provider all I get is a Canadian message saying that the (UK) number I have dialled “is not assigned”. Strangely most people are able to phone her OK if they phone via their UK mobile phone.įault reporting, escalating and diagnostics has recently been more challenging because I have had to be abroad (in Canada) for a few months. ![]() But for pretty much all of that 2 months, other people phoning her from their landlines get number unobtainable or the call just goes dead after dialling. That was 2 months ago – the good news is it has worked for nearly all of the last 2 months for outbound phone calls. (at 97 she has zero understanding or use for this “’new fangled internet” stuff – she is a digital voice only user.) So I installed The Smart Hub 2 in accordance with the instructions, and plugged the DECT analogue answer phone in to the back of the Smart Hub 2 again as per their instructions. And I was surprised towards the end of this wait, to learn they were converting her to Digital Voice, closing her prior account and treating her like a new customer and they were sending a Smart Hub2 to a near blind 97 year old with dementia!. ![]() It took BT, 4 weeks to connect a pre-existing line for an existing customer of 30+ years, who they ought to treat as vulnerable (but Christmas/NewYear probably exaggerated the delay). Disconnect the landline at her previous bungalow and, because she was only moving less than a mile in distance, I asked them to transfer her existing phone number. I asked for the (copper cable) landline that was already in her room to be enabled. As an account manager for her account, I phoned BT and worked through their moving home process. Up until then she lived alone, but depended heavily on her (PSTN) landline phone and the emergency assist necklace that uses the phone line. 3 months ago, my 97 year old mother who is virtually blind and has dementia, accepted that a care home would provide her with the best around the clock support.
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