Broadband phone upgrade issues

[Alowicious28]

I am so fed up with Virgin 😡
My father died recently and through trying to contact people we had issues with the phones not working properly.  The house phone used to be plugged into the main BT box but was paid to Virgin media along with TV and broadband.  Because of the issues we were having an engineer came out and said 'we're upgrading everyone to broadband phone lines anyway so we won't use the BT box anymore' so he unplugged the house phone and plugged it into the broadband box, tested the phone, it worked and he left.  Trouble is he didn't ask my elderly mother if she had any other services plugged into the BT phone box - she does!! Her care alarm box (Well-being) for if she falls over and her House burglar alarm box (ADT), so now both of these no longer work.

Spent an hour on the phone with Virgin who say it's not to do with them and call the providers of these services.  Called Wellbeing and ADT Alarms and they say that Virgin needs to connect them to the broadband line.

I asked Virgin to put it all back to the BT box today and they have refused.  I am at a loss as what to do??? At the moment as we are about to enter into a new contact with Virgin (Due to a death) I am verging on cancelling the contract completely and switching to BT.  Anyone had this problem and managed to sort it out at all???? Advice gratefully received as I am back and forth and getting nowhere fast and in the meantime if my Mother falls then no one will be able to help her !

[goslow]

Sadly, this is not an uncommon situation which is mentioned on here with some regularity. Some general info (if you are not aware already), all providers are moving to phone connections via their respective routers so switching provider probably won't be a solution.

Basically you need to have your internal extension sockets connected into the VM hub. VM have recently dropped their price for non-fault call outs to £25 so they may offer this to reconnect the phone extensions.

Also worth noting that in the event of a power cut or a hub fault/outage, then the phone line might not work which means that neither would the attached care/alarm devices.

VM do offer an emergency backup box but, by default, this is only set up to call 999 and nothing more. Other possibilities were discussed in this recent topic, similar to your situation

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/How-can-I-add-an-extension/td-p/4770936

IMO, if VM have converted your connection for their own convenience, instead of repairing an existing phone fault, they should leave you in no worse situation than you were in previously esp. if your mother is elderly and has need of these care/alarm devices. However, VM's policy (or, in fact, not actually having a clear policy) on this is a bit of a shambles and outcomes seem to vary on a case-by-case basis for different customers.

See what the VM forum team can do for you. They will typically respond on here within a couple of days.

[Molly_G]

Hey @Alowicious28,
 
Welcome to the forums and thanks for your post. Our condolences firstly from all at Virgin Media. 
 
I'm sorry for the confusion about the phone line and the alarm system. We are phasing out all 'old-style' landlines by 2025 in order to change the way we deliver a telephone service - the new way is via the broadband router. 
 
However, we do appreciate this is not ideal for you and your mother in this particular circumstance right now. I'd like to try and help find a solution to this, so I'll just send you a private message so I can get some account details and we can go from there. Please keep an eye on the purple envelope at the top of the page.

Kind regards,