Fibrephone switch issue

[jolimasa]

Connected cordless phone to hub in living room but cannot hear it ringing in rest of house (3 bed semi).  It was in ground floor hall at bottom of stairs & had a corded phone in first floor bedroom & could hear phones ringing from anywhere in the house.   When connected to hub the corded phone works but will not ring.  So only the cordless phone can be used & it is in living room.  Rang Virgin Media on 150 & was advised that I will need to buy another 1 or 2 cordless phones to match my existing one.  However my cordless phone is an old BT Freestyle 710 that is no longer available & I doubt that additional handsets will be available.  Therefore I face having to buy a new set of 3 cordless phones that are hearing aid compatible for about £100.  Or is there another way so that I can hear the phone ringing anywhere in the house.  Any help & advice will be most appreciated.

[Travis_M]

Hi @jolimasa

Thanks for posting on our community forum!

My apologies for the inconvenience, the only workaround we can suggest is the same as what our support teams advised regarding buying the other 1/2 cordless phones.

Regards

[goslow · Accepted solution]

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@jolimasa wrote:

Connected cordless phone to hub in living room but cannot hear it ringing in rest of house (3 bed semi).  It was in ground floor hall at bottom of stairs & had a corded phone in first floor bedroom & could hear phones ringing from anywhere in the house.   When connected to hub the corded phone works but will not ring.  So only the cordless phone can be used & it is in living room.  Rang Virgin Media on 150 & was advised that I will need to buy another 1 or 2 cordless phones to match my existing one.  However my cordless phone is an old BT Freestyle 710 that is no longer available & I doubt that additional handsets will be available.  Therefore I face having to buy a new set of 3 cordless phones that are hearing aid compatible for about £100.  Or is there another way so that I can hear the phone ringing anywhere in the house.  Any help & advice will be most appreciated.

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This is one of those topics where the customer has their phone converted by VM and is left in a situation where their previously-functioning phone setup has now been rendered useless by VM's changeover and they have to go to great expense to fix it. Certainly a strange version of an 'upgrade'.

VM previously published info which advised they would connect up phone extensions free of charge during phone switchovers but that info has now been taken down and it just says to contact VM.

I would be pretty surprised, as you are a hearing aid user, if VM decide they are just going to leave you like this following the switchover with no further help.

If your corded phone is not ringing, it is likely this is because it is an older phone (probably early 2000's or before) and the hub arrangement is missing a component (which is present in the old wall sockets) which allows these older phones to ring. If VM linked your hub's phone socket to your previous phone sockets including the master socket you may find the corded phone worked again and rang. I am guessing that VM are now going to be trying to charge customers £25 for these wiring modifications in the future which would be a poor show.

Your cordless phone Freestyle 710 seems to date from about 2008 to 2010 so is not that new but not completely ancient either. You have a couple of options there perhaps.

A quick glance on eBay shows this model is readily available for low 10's of pounds

There is a guide here

https://www.bt.com/content/dam/bt/help/legacy-ug/phones/BT%20Freestyle%20710%20user%20guide.pdf

which shows it can be connected to upto 5 handsets. You could maybe get some second hand handsets from eBay and add those to the system (usual caveats and warnings apply to buying anything second hand from eBay). You might have to match the exact age of the model carefully though to the same time when you bought yours (the model name may be the same but has perhaps gone through different versions and improvements over time)

The BT help page here (with a manual dated 2011)

https://www.bt.com/help/user-guides/phones/landline-phones/cordless-phones/bt-freestyle-710

also mentions it is GAP-compatible which means the system can work with other GAP-compatible phones but only in a very simple way (making/receiving calls but not any of the advanced phone features). You may be able to get a new GAP-compatible phone to add to the system. This might depend on the age of the phone as some versions of the Freestyle 710 say it is GAP-compatible and some older versions do not seem to mention it. There are a couple of free phone numbers and an email link for a helpdesk service for the model where you could get some detailed advice on if this would be possible or not at the link above.

Finally, you might want to just get new cordless phones throughout and have the reassurance they are all new. A triple pack of cordless phones would probably cost about £100. If you get new though, buy from somewhere with a good returns policy in case you run into an further unexpected issue with a particular phone model on the VM phone connection and need to return them.

[jolimasa]

Thank you goslow. Lots of useful info there. Much appreciated. Wonder whether VM will comment. I may make a formal complaint as phoning 150 rarely gets issues resolved.

[jolimasa]

For others info here's the official response from Virgin Media to my complaint and my reply.  What do others think?

Here's an update on your complaint

We have a little update on your complaint with us. We didn’t want to delay things, so we’ve gone ahead and looked into a resolution for you.

Here’s a quick recap

Your complaint was:
Cable > Customer Experience > Other 

We’ve looked into it and here’s what we found:
Appreciate you taking time to drop an email regarding the home phone issues that you hav ben facing John. We are really sorry for all the hassle caused. We have had a look at your query however we would like to recommend you that you may go ahead and get the switchover done if you are comfortable with the deal offered to you, when it comes about you not being able to hear the phone when it rings, since you are not ok with getting 3 cordless phones worth 100 dollars, for that we would suggest you to get an affordable speaker fixed right next to the phone so that when the phone rings, due to the speaker, the voice is echoed loudly in the house of the phone ringing. Having to go with this option you can even have the switchover done and will be able to get the volume issue also fixed. Alternatively, for any further technical assistance, you may get in touch with our care team on the below mentioned number. You may view some of our self help options as well.
Fix a issue - https://www.virginmedia.com/help/fix-an-issue
Help & Support - https://www.virginmedia.com/help 

Here’s what we offer as resolution:
Technical > Technical help provided

We hope this works for you.

We’ll keep your complaint open for 28 days from now just in case you still want to talk through your options. Please ring us on 0345 454 1111* if you’re not completely happy with the resolution.

If we don’t hear back after 28 days, we’ll assume you’re satisfied with everything and close your complaint.

Stay on top of your services

To make the most of your time with us, make sure you’ve downloaded the My Virgin Media app. With it, you can manage your bills with a tap and a swipe, check the service status in your area, find out when we expect any known problems will be fixed, diagnose issues with your in-home equipment, and loads more.

Take care,

The Virgin Media team

[goslow]

Oh dear! What total nonsense!

I can think of various responses and further actions here jolimasa but what is your preferred resolution to the problem? (In any event, you might need to replace your corded phone if it is old and does not ring when connected to the VM hub)

If it is a case of linking your extension sockets to the phone connection from the VM, then the VM web page

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/home-phone/virginphone/switchover

says a) the phone switchover should be at 'no extra cost' to you and b) you should get a free technician visit if you have extension sockets to connect and/or your phone and hub are not near to each other

This was confirmed in a similar topic from yesterday

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Phone-Switch-Over/td-p/4972463

[jolimasa]

Thank you once again for the advice and also for the useful info.  I've requested that my complaint be escalated which means that it will be referred to a manager - see below.  I'll see what happens.

Hello Virgin Media

In accordance with your customer complaint policy please escalate my complaint to a manager.

As a loyal customer for over 20 years I am absolutely disgusted at your response.  The person who wrote the response cannot speak or write English properly.  There are spelling mistakes and poor construction of sentences.  I feel that you have given my complaint to somebody that is incapable of dealing with it, and that VM have not taken my complaint seriously and have tried to fob me off.

The solution proposed is ridiculous - basically to put a speaker next to the phone so that the volume is sufficient to be heard throughout the house.  If that solution is actually practicable then anybody in the living room will be deafened and as my lounge adjoins next door's house my neighbour will be disturbed.  Is such a speaker actually available?  Is such a speaker affordable?  How much is affordable?  Have VM any suggestions?  I am insulted at the suggestion that this is a way to overcome my disability.

Your communications prior to the day of conversion to fibre phone did talk about the possibility of an engineer rewiring to maintain the location of phones and I did contact customer service about that but was cut off and despite you knowing my landline and mobile phone numbers nobody rang back.

If the cordless phone was retained in the ground floor hall at the bottom of the stairs then that would be better and the phone would be more audible throughout the house.

I would prefer that the manager contact me by email as I often struggle to hear people on the phone, although I get by on the phone,  I'm ok if it's a clear line and they are a clear speaker.

Kind Regards

[Paul_DN]

Hi jolimasa,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome back, we are sorry to hear your phones are no longer working which has caused issues with you hearing the phone ring, I will be more than happy to help further and look into how we get your extensions working again where possible, I will send you an invite into a private chat, once received please click on the purple envelope to accept.

Regards

Paul.

[jolimasa]

Problems all sorted now but route to solution seems so unnecessary to me.

VM instructions said phone must be within 2 metres of router.  I tried a long extension lead to the original phone position in the hall at bottom of stairs and hey presto the phone works there.  A VM forum operative also arranged for a VM technician to visit and he said that was similar to what he would have done and that the phone does not need to be within 2 metres of the router.  VM needs to change that misleading instruction.  VM technician was very helpful and used another connector that connected my extension lead to the phone socket there and the phone, enabling the phone in the first floor bedroom to work, including the ringtone.  So, phones now working in their original positions and I can hear them throughout the house when they ring.  VM needs to review it's customer interface as the route to reaching this solution was all so unnecessary.

[Akua_A]

Thank you for the update @jolimasa.

We are glad to see the issue was resolved and you had some assistance from our technician team. We do apologise on behalf of our teams for the experience that you had regarding this. We will indeed take your feedback on board and pass it on to the relevant teams for improvement.

Thanks,