...and his nominated tech helper

I was contacted by my mother last week asking to help George, her 88yo neighbour. George lives alone, has mobility issues and relied on his home line as he has no mobile.

In the last fortnight, George's Slingshot connected home phone stopped working. The cordless screen said 'check phone line'. I called Slingshot on his behalf, described the problem and also asked the simple question not account related, "has copper been withdrawn from his vicinity?". Flat refusal for a yay or nay because privacy. Irksome really.

Anyway, I visited him with a spare device and cables and tried them in the various BT copper sockets with no joy. I tried connecting a phone directly to the PSTN port on the ONT that had been installed a couple of years back. No voltage on the BT, dead copper.

So we called Slingshot, he pulled out all his Slingshot correspondence. The most recent was Dec 2023, advice that they were sending out paper correspondence anymore, but only via email....Problem! George did not have any internet, let alone email services.

When we finally got through to a helpdesk person, verified George was with me, we asked about the issue. They stated that 'emails out' advising clients that the copper was being withdrawn in George's area were sent out recently. I countered with "what email address do you have for George?", they responded that they don't have any record of an email address. I then asked "How then was George supposed to receive notice that his phone service was being cut?! Silence.

I said "moving on, how can we help George? Bear in mind he ONLY has a home phone. No mobile." The team member responded that they can't unless unless George signed up to an internet plan and purchased a modem. They further advised that "if he wanted a homeline only option running direct from the ONT, only Spark can assist. And that was explained in the email that went out". GGRRR

So we called Spark. I terminated the call with 'Jill' after 25 minutes when I realised I wasn't making headway. They were quite emphatic he needed to have a copper line because of his St John's medic alarm, unable to grasp he has a 4G connected unit that was installed last year. During this call, George said, "what about a cell phone?" So I terminated that call and we went through provider options for a 'Pay Monthly' account. He agreed that 2Degrees would be best.

So we called them. Their advice was that if he wanted a phone on the day, rather go to a store. Because of the mobility issue, I volunteered to go and get a phone. Pop into the store, I explained that a handset was needed and that user was unable to come with me. Their advice, "here, take this SIM, follow the instructions, you set up a new account online". Return to George with his new Samsung, follow instruction on putting in the SIM and following the call 200 process....No Network Registered. Call the helpdesk on my phone, they struggled to get past this wasn't a phone being added to my account. Eventually the 4th person I spoke said, just go online and create the account, you'll be allocated a phone number etc.

Great, done that bit. Credit Card loaded, phone number allocated, but no where to assign it to the SIM. Back to helpdesk, "no all you need is the phone number, the number on this SIM doesn't matter"..."How does the SIM get associated with the number?" Silence. "Mebbe tak it into a store"

So off I went. Same store it came from..."No we can't do anything but wait, it's in the system being processed...we don't know how long that'll take"

With 45+ years under my belt as a tech guy, I feel so frustrated. These things are supposed to make our lives simpler and easier. Well that's what we are encouraged to tell our clients.