BT New Line Trauma for my Elderly Mum

Bonkers123

Can anyone help with some guidance or advice?

My elderly mum has sold her home to live closer to me - she has bought a new build property.

On 19th June she ordered a line and service from BT

She was then kept in the dark about what was happening however we managed to work out that Openreach needed to do some external work.

However we found out that absolutely nothing happened AT aLL until the 21st August.

She then had an email saying that all Openreach work had been completed and that the details were then with the newsites team - BT

BT have now informed her that they have digging work to do and need permission and they won't get that until 2nd October so still no end in sight.

She had to move out of her home as it sold and so has been staying with friends for the last 3 weeks until she is able to move into the new house on Tuesday next week.

She has a very basic mobile phone which BT insist on communicating with her on via text - which she isn't that competent on and has been staying in locations with no signal.

I have only just found out about these issues as at the moment she will be loving into a house next week with no landline and in a village with no mobile signal so will be extremely vulnerable.

I would like to see how this can be escalated to understand exactly what work is being undertaken - and why and what the schedule then is and why ultimately it has needed to take so long.

She is only able to contact via a non-uk call centre via her mobile phone which she struggles to hear on so this has now become quite urgent.

The call-centre cannot give her any useful information

Any suggestions or contact numbers I can try Please?

Retrogamer

This is one of the problems with new builds. It takes a long time for the planning and logistics to be completed for the hardware to be installed. Then the hardware has to be installed.
Then all the back end systems have to be provisioned and updated to reflect the new changes.

BT retail will query timescales with BT Wholesale who will then query it with BT Openreach. The problem is independently each of these companies are poor with communicating information so i wouldn't hold out much hope for accurate timescales or a response.

Bonkers123

But at the moment she will be moving into a property with absolutely no means of making a call or her personal alarm working or her home security.

The order was placed on June 19th and open reach say they are done...

Buzby

The developers are at fault. How can they manage water, electric and possibly gas, yet overlook providing ducts for Openreach to provide comms? If the developer has done nothing, then OR have to seek wayleaves to get cables in to the properties.

It looks as though all owners are in the same boat - but the lack of mobile reception it hardly the fault of BT (other mobile networks are available). There is little anyone can do - with new build this should have been raised much earlier. You can tell BT not to text updates, and you can be made a contact instead until the line is installed and working.

The_Groat_Counter

Openreach might be everybody's favourite whipping boy, but in this case it's the developer at fault for not making provision.

Regarding mobile coverage - it's possible one network might have coverage where another does not (there are four underlying mobile networks in the UK - Vodafone, O2, EE and Three). All will send you a free pay-as-you-go SIM card, otherwise you can pick them up for a quid in many shops - so you can test which network might have coverage.

If she struggles with mobiles, you might wish to consider buying her a Doro mobile handset - these are specifically designed for ease of use.

thefirs

Even easier might be one of the gsm desktop phones such as you can view at http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/gsm-desktop-phone, though you must check that there's signal via one of the networks first. None of them seems to support 3g, so don't go for one of these for a Three network sim.