Line cord error. Please check

[DavidS3]

11 July 2023. Switchover from my analog home phone to Virgin Media’s ‘new PHONE system’. Was told in VM’s documentation to connect HOME phone after 09:30 hours on 11 July 2023. Connected my HOME phone at about 11:30 hours on 11 July 2023. 

I live in a basement flat which has absolutely no capacity to receive a mobile signal 15 feet below ground level!

After connecting my BT home phone (BT8500), everything appeared to work, although I did not try to call myself to see if I could receive HOME calls. No ‘error’ messages were obvious on my cordless BT 8500. I was impressed at how easy and smooth the process appeared to go. Short lived. 

About an hour later, I lost broadband. I remember the information provided by Virgin Media said words to the effect ‘if you loose broadband you will also loose your HOME phone’. OK I thought, it’s the first day of switchover teething problems I thought. However, the small screen on my BT8500 now said ‘Line cord error. Please check’. So, I switched off everything and went through the reconnection process as provided by VM documentation. 

After restarting everything, still nothing, same error message ‘Line cord error. Please check’. So, I decided to put my HOME phone cable back into the old VM wall socket and was surprised that I got a dial tone and could make outgoing calls. After about an hour, again broadband dropped and I lost everything again. No phone no broadband nothing.

So, it was time to call VM customer service after reconnecting to VM wall socket (not modem). 40 minutes waiting for the phone to be answered the Customer Service said ‘your land line is showing a fault, leave it until tomorrow (Friday 14 July) and if it has not sorted itself out call us back’.

Friday 14 July after three more broadband disconnections time to call VM Customer service again. Another 40 minutes plus wait to connect to customer service. I again explained the issue. They said ‘ok, let’s test your PHONE line’ I said I was talking to them via the old vm socket in the wall.

They checked the broadband and reset the system whilst I was on the PHONE. Then I was asked to ‘once I drop this call, please switch back on the router connect the new adapter to the top socket and I will try and call you’ they added ‘wait two minutes, if you don’t get my call, disconnect the PHONE from the router and reconnect to the old VM wall socket and I will call you’. 

Of course, I received no call back, probably because my PHONE service was not working. Frustrated doesn’t begin to describe how I was feeling. Last night (Saturday) I searched the internet for hours to try and get a simple question answered ‘which PHONES are compatible with Virgin Media ‘PHONE’ switchover. Absolutely nothing could be found just ‘check with your equipment provider’, seriously!

Another phone call to VM customer service got nowhere, two additional ‘online virtual assistants’ later still nothing. 

I finally found out, through internet search, that my BT8500 was analog and would not work on VM PHONE service. So, today Sunday 16 July 5 days after the supposed switchover I went to Curry’s (UK) and spent £90 on two ‘digital cordless phones’ said to be compatible with the new PHONE service.

You guessed it! After removing everything connected to the router, simply putting router power direct into wall socket, removing all other cables connected to the router, connected the new BT Premium Phone Twin cordless phones via VM adapter I still get nothing except ‘Line cord error. Please check’. 

Please someone in Virgin Media please sort out this mess. I have absolutely no communications whatsoever with the outside world except broadband which has become erratic since 11 July, dropping off at least three times a day, which another VM customer service advisor located in a foreign country tells me is ‘normal’ at which point I put the phone down. Enough Virgin Media.

Just one month into a new 18 month contract, please explain what to do next. Thank you. 

[Paul_DN]

Hi DavidS3,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome, sorry to hear you have been facing issues with your Landline since your Landline Switchover,

I was able to locate you on our system with the details we have for you and although you have advised you got a dial tone when plugging in the old wall socket I can confirm it does look like you have been converted.

What handset do you have, how old is it, is it a Dect?

Regards

Paul.

[DavidS3]

Hello Paul, many things have happened since I placed this comment. However, I still do not have any PHONE service as of 23 July 2023. I finally managed to organise an VM engineers visit for 20 July. The engineer arrived and set about changing the broadband router from the model 3 to 5. He checked the system and it still did not work, same error “Line cord error. Please check’.

So, the engineer replaced the internal adapter/wall socket and cable adapters. He checked the system and again it did not work error message continued. The engineer the went outside of the house and replaced various adapters and cable ends in the junction box, tried the system again and it still did not work. The engineer then went into ‘myaccountsettings’ and showed me that despite ‘your system claiming I had been changed over’ he showed me that my account was showing phone activation setting greyed out and therefore ‘not activated’.

The engineer made various calls to his boss, support and whoever, throughout the hour+ that he spent at my property, each time with no success. So after probably an hour and a half, he gave up after sending an internal message/email to a particular department because it was declared ‘the issue is not at my property, or my particular BT cordless telephone older 8500 model or what was then the brand new BT DECT model.

The engineer apologised saying that he would be away fir two weeks holiday from Friday but that he would ask a colleague to follow it up. He left and I still had no PHONE service.

Friday morning 21 July at about 09:30 a second engineer arrived, unannounced (but welcomed). He was carrying yet another Broadband router 5 identical to the one installed the day before by his colleague. I told him that I had spent almost three hours, the day before, resetting my various equipment to work with my new model 5 router. He said ‘they are telling us (engineers) that we must replace the router (again).

The engineer replaced the router and after a prompt from me that the only thing that has not been changed is the small adapter cable sent in the post. We laughed, wouldn’t it be funny if it was the adapter. No such luck, the adapter was replaced and we continued to get ‘Line cord error. Please check. The engineer who was in my property for over 30 minutes, made various calls throughout his visit and again, he sent an email message to a particular department saying to me ‘it’s not your equipment the error is with Virgin Media’s PHONE switching system.

So, another weekend without any phone communication and living in a basement with no mobile signal I’ve now been without communication since 11 July 2023 and Virgin Media have done nothing ‘effective’ to rectify that situation. Another example of no one person taking responsibility fir a complaint instead being passed from person-to-person with no resolution just more stress to the customer. 

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @DavidS3,

Thank you for coming back to us about this ongoing issue! Sorry to hear that you've had a poor experience with our services so far and that your landline was not working before! 

I can see that an IT ticket has been raised and marked as resolved on our system in regards to this. Can you please reboot your Hub and let us know if this helps rectify your landline issue? 

Please give this a try and let us know how you get on. 

Thank you.

[DavidS3]

Thank you for your input! I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘and that your landline was not working before!’. My landline has been working flawlessly for over 18 years until that is 11 July 2023 immediately after Virgin Media forced me to switch my BT Cordless phone to the back of my broadband router using the adapter, on 11 July 2023 . Let me make it clear in case of any doubt. I do not have a working landline now.

However, I bothered myself once again (for the hundredth time), to switch off the unit, as you asked, and still the PHONE service is not working ‘Line cord error. Please check’.

As for any IT ticket being shown as resolved … I am lost for words! Resolving an IT ticket your side may well help employees gain ‘points for allegedly resolving an issue first time round’ or engineers get their £10 for resolving an issue during their first visit, or managers get promoted for high resolution rates. I don’t care about the politics of Virgin Media. What I do care about is paying for a PHONE service that I do not have and wasting my time sorting out Virgin Media’s problems.

Thank you.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @DavidS3,

Thanks for coming back to me about this. I understand that your landline has been working before the switchover, I miss-spoke. Apologies.

Would you be happy for another technician appointment to have this looked into further? If this issue is not resolved with this appointment, we'll be able to look into this further with the Area Manager and see what is causing this fault.

Please let me know if you'd like to arrange this and I can have everything booked in for you.

Thank you.

[DavidS3]

Another technician appointment! I have no option but to say yes because to say no will not help my situation. However, I am absolutely positive, as are the two previous technician's who visited my property, that the problem cannot be resolved by your technicians, here at my home, but by whoever is dealing with the IT switching process, your system claims the switchover has occurred, yet your engineers have shown me my account which shows the PHONE service has not been activated (greyed out). They’ve made it absolutely clear ‘the fault is with the switching process’ not me, my property, or my equipment.

So again, let me make it clear, I do accept another technicians appointment but I will not accept any more of my time being wasted sorting out issues that are not of my making, which do not involve my Virgin Media equipment but which are clearly the fault of Virgin Media and its switching process.

I would much prefer however, that this matter be handed to the Area Manager now and that someone at Virgin Media listen to their own engineers telling them that the issue is with their switchover process and takes responsibility for this mess.

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me feel when after submitting these reports (wasting more of my time), I get a ‘Congratulations’ email from the Virgin Media Community for my input into the Community forum … really!

Thank you.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @DavidS3,

Thanks for coming back to me. I'll be happy to raise the necessary appointment and contact the Area Manager to make them aware of your ongoing landline issue.

I'll send you a Private Message to confirm a few details, so please keep an eye out for an envelope at the top right corner of your Forum page. I'll be in touch soon.
Thank you!