No Ring Tone After Changeover

[polly43]

Our phones (the main downstairs phone and the upstairs extension) have survived the changeover to fibre, in that they can make and receive calls OK, but there is no ring tone on incoming calls! The 'New' Motorola 'Emergency' phone rings out, but not our own home phones! According to the engineer, our phones are too old to ring out when they receive a call! Unbelievable! Not too old then to send and receive calls, but too old to have a ring tone? Please! It's not that I am unwilling to purchase new phones; although I really don't see why I should when our old phones were working perfectly before the change and still are, except for the absence of the ring tones, but who is to say there will be a ring tone with new phones either? So now we are left with a non-system of if we hear the downstairs 'Emergency' phone ring, we can pick up either of our 'Old' phones and answer the calls. Where I can put this 'Emergency' phone is limited too because the cable is so short. We are both disabled, and to have to stand up to make and answer calls is impossible! I got a strong impression that the engineer had just so much time allocated to each installation and so he didn't have the time or the inclination to investigate any further. This is just not good enough! We didn't ask for this change; I didn't want to have to leave my router on permanently 24 hours a day either! We have been put to a lot of inconvenience over this. It seems to me that Virgin is looking to save a shedload of money on leasing telephone lines from BT or wherever. I don't suppose for a minute that our telephone charges will go down either, in spite of Virgin's saving all this money! We will now be paying twice for a telephone 'Line' that we were already paying for! Our existing internet connection! 😠

[Akua_A]

Hi Polly,

Welcome back to our community forums and sorry to hear you are unhappy with your landline switchover. We can understand the frustration caused by the new fault regarding your ring tone and we want to best help.

Just to confirm, have you checked your handset itself to see if the ringer volume has been reduced? Also, have any settings on your handset been changed during the switch over. 

Please get back to us when you can so we can best help.

Thanks,

[goslow]

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@polly43 wrote:

Our phones (the main downstairs phone and the upstairs extension) have survived the changeover to fibre, in that they can make and receive calls OK, but there is no ring tone on incoming calls! <snip> 😠

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Roughly what sort of age are the telephones that do not ring?

[polly43]

I have checked and no, the ringer volume has not been reduced.  As far as I am aware, no settings have been changed during the changeover.  Of course, I don't know just what the engineer did.  I was wondering if the installation of the 'New' 'Emergency' phone has had anything to do with our old phones not ringing when called.  I made a call on our upstairs extension this morning and it worked fine.  The main phone also works fine for outgoing calls, but both have no ring tone.  Also, why does this 'New' Motorola phone have such a skimpy, short cable that attaches to the the nearest electricity point?  It limits where I can put it!  As for saying that in spite of the fact that both of the phones are working except for the ring tone, that the age of the phones are stopping them from ringing is ridiculous!  As I said, both me and my husband are disabled and rely on our phones and also being able to hear them when we receive a call!  The engineer seemed too busy to investigate any further.  What is more, I have today received an e-mail to the effect that he seems to think he did everything neccessary and left our house with everything working properly, which is very far from the case! 

[goslow]

The age of the phones is relevant because the technology which makes them ring has changed over the years. Phones from arounds the early 2000's, and before, may be affected by this non-ringing issue when the phone line is connected via the VM hub.

Your phone line in the past, via traditional wall sockets, would have come through a 'master socket' which could have looked something like this photo linked below (join/line in the plastic across the front and two small sets of screws lower down) Example link below (though styles and shape may differ and may have a different logo on)

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/154273iC290D15BEAB7183E/image-size/la...

The master socket contained the necessary electronic components to make older phones ring (namely a 'ringing capacitor')

Newer phones do not need these components and they are not included in the phone connection on the VM hub. This could possibly be why you have no ringing on these phones.

There are ways that these older phones can be made to ring. It would, however, require a VM technician who understands the issue and (from some of the topics on here) many do not seem to.

You are correct that the VM technicians are likely to be time-constrained on each job. Hence they do the basics to make the customer's equipment (mostly) work as they have to move on to the next job. VM do sometimes arrange second follow-up visits to deal with matters of extension sockets as a separate issue.

Would you be able to borrow a new/current model of phone (say from a friend, family member, neighbour) and test it in the extension sockets where your phones are not ringing? This might give you some confidence that, if you replaced the phones, some new ones might ring as required and confirm the age of the existing phones is the issue.

[Anonymous]

At least one of my phones is over 30 years old and works fine (even using pulse dial) when the internet works, however I did connect the hub to the master socket myself which took about 2 minutes. The last "engineer" I had in my house had lets say horrendous "personal issues" so I didn't want to go through that again, especially during a warm summer. Just a shame the internet isn't reliable enough, in my area, for a telephone line to be fit for purpose especially when VM don't provide the support to enable voicemail for when the internet is down, meaning callers just get terminated without it even ringing, with all the distress that causes.

[goslow]

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@Anonymous wrote:
At least one of my phones is over 30 years old and works fine (even using pulse dial) when the internet works, however I did connect the hub to the master socket myself which took about 2 minutes. The last "engineer" I had in my house had lets say horrendous "personal issues" so I didn't want to go through that again, especially during a warm summer. Just a shame the internet isn't reliable enough, in my area, for a telephone line to be fit for purpose especially when VM don't provide the support to enable voicemail for when the internet is down, meaning callers just get terminated without it even ringing, with all the distress that causes.

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Kudos to you, Jon975, for getting your 30 y.o phone working. If you have wired in the master socket, and have 3 wires running between your extensions, you should get ringing for older phones. If you have pulse dialling working, I think that might be more of a quirk of the central phone equipment in your area. AIUI, some of the previous cable TV regions, which VM acquired, used BT equipment, which allowed pulse dialling, and some used American equipment, which did not. The VM doc's for 21CV connections all advise using tone dialling, so don't know how pulse dialling is working for you over the 21CV connection.

As for the resilience of a phone connection from the hub, it's a strange kind of 21st century progress that the phone connection is less resilient in power cuts than its predecessors!

[Lee_R]

Hi @polly43, thanks for getting back to us.

I am sorry to hear you're still having issues with your telephone service, since migrating to 21CV.  I would like to take a closer look on your behalf.  I am going to send you a private message.

Regards

Lee_R

[polly43]

Thanks Goslow.  I can't unfortunately borrow anyone's phone to check this and even if I could, I wouldn't know where to start!  I've had a look at the little tabs that have been fitted to the existing phone cables and I'm lost!  However, the fact that the 'New'  'Emergency' phone that Virgin provided does ring out, would seem relevant to your explanation.  And, indeed our phones are pretty old, but still working very well!  However, we did not ask for this 'Migration' of our phone service, and as I have already said, I am not at all happy with having to leave my router on 24/7!  So why should I have to go to the expense of purchasing two new phones in order to make work something I did not want in the first place? It would be better if someone who understood about these things could come and fix it.  Something happened to the ringtone of our upstairs phone a couple of years ago and the techie  who came did something to the outside box on the wall and fixed it!  He was quite old and obviously knew what he was doing and what he was looking for.  It only took him a few minutes! 

(NB: I would still like an answer to the question of why Virgin will still be charging customers for a landline that they do not now have, but for an existing internet connection that they are already paying for!) 😕

[goslow]

All suppliers are making this change across the UK as part of a national programme of work. Further info below

https://www.futureofvoice.co.uk/

so there is no avoiding it unfortunately even by switching supplier.

If you reply to the PM offered by Lee_R at message number 8, he may try to do something to help further (use the purple envelope icon in the top right corner of the screen on the forum when you are logged in).