Call-screening landline phone not working on Digital Voice

[organisedjim]

We have a BT 8600 cordless phone which has built-in Call Guardian / trueCall feature.  We were moved to Digital Voice and FTTP a couple of weeks ago with a new hub, and after that we noticed the call blocking isn't letting some calls through at all.

When we try calling our landline from a mobile, we get the Call Guardian message ("please say your name and press hash") but pressing hash doesn't do anything, the message just repeats.  It seems that the keypress isn't getting through to the BT 8600.  Calling from another landline works fine though.   The cordless phone is plugged directly into the green port on the hub, and I've tried changing that cable.

I've read that mobile phones send keypresses digitally rather than as audio tones, and that the EE hub is meant to convert it to tones.  If I call our landline number from my mobile and press a number key, I don't hear the tone.

I don't see any settings in the hub admin page for this - does anyone have any advice on this?

[YorkshireMidge]

@Leanne_T  It's clear that there are some significant technical issues with the EE branded hubs so are you able to do some digging with your product line to find out what on earth is going on?   Fault reports and complaints through normal service channels seem to have no effect whatsoever when dealing with bugs deep in the product and first line BT staff seem completely ill-prepared to deal with these sorts of issues.  Any help you can offer would be appreciated. 

To give you an example, over a month ago,  I sent a formal written complaint to the Sunderland customer service address regarding a port forwarding bug I'd hit  c/w technical details of precisely how it manifests itself so it can easily be reproduced in a test environment - and I've not even had an acknowledgement back for my troubles.   If the EE hub really is the bug ridden pile of poo it's beginning to look like, someone in product line needs to take a hold of these issues and manage them properly.  Feel free to message me directly if needed.    

[JimM11]

@YorkshireMidge Although you are perhaps now fully aware the EE/BT forum team are both one and the same, but do you mean from above BT staff or EE staff? There is no real direct reporting and the FW team may just be having a few bad off day's at present, then again you just cannot get all eventualities fully covered all off the time. 

[YorkshireMidge]

@JimM11   Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was referring to BT staff in the general sense that the BT, EE and PlusNet brands all sit under BT Consumer so they are all BT staff.   But for clarity, I meant whoever picks up the phone when I ring the EE service number.  I think the lady I spoke to the other day was based in Dundee where BT have a big call centre operation.

Not sure about PlusNet in terms of how far that it is integrated into the BT service structure.  I used to walk right past their office/contact centre in Leeds on my way to work but I'm fairly sure that site was due to close and staff were going to be integrated into a large BT contact centre in South Yorks.  

[JimM11]

@YorkshireMidge Fully understand that but there is different support numbers for each, and the common 150 landline approach, BT/EE same group as to wither fully integrated that is a way different question. For sure BT product then BT CS would be the place to head as they would i hope fully have the BT Hub knowledge.

When i was with EE, did have call backs and would flash up BT Guide calling or EE Guide calling, did not matter which one so cared not at that time.

PN got zero idea about....

[YorkshireMidge]

Quick update after a few days - my TrueCall unit is still working happily on BT SmartHub 2.

[YorkshireMidge]

Formal written complaint also raised now.  I would encourage anyone similarly affected to do the same. 

[JimM11]

@YorkshireMidge Still worth giving it a couple off weeks in operation to be sure all the possible services and friends get through correctly or blocked as desired  though, been a few on the BT Forum but may be not that Truecall version that you have the fix as far as i could see was to ensure FW was up to date and pointed towards getting from Truecall direct although no idea how it would be done.

[Jones01]

@JimM11 ,

It's always worth double checking that everything is working as it should, but the evidence that @YorkshireMidge has given that the ATA in the EE hub is the source of the issue is compelling:

"I have replaced the TrueCall with a standard phone for testing purposes and I'm not getting the tones passed through at all when I ring from a mobile and hit the breakthrough key and that cannot be the fault of the TrueCall unit, and the OP has the same issue with the BT 8600."

TrueCall units do seem to behave differently with different ATAs. The problem that I had with ours and a Grandstream ATA was different from the one described by @YorkshireMidge . Ours blocked all  calls!

TrueCall update the firmware of their units over the phone line. It takes about thirty minutes to complete. Ours is on 

Runtime 34.21; Macro Version 6.43.

I don't know if that is the latest version. I have had no reason to check, because the unit has been working correctly since I replaced the Grandstream and the Plusnet router with a Fritzbox router, which is a neater solution.

[YorkshireMidge]

Still working fine on the BT Smart Hub 2. 

Never got any follow up to the calls to EE C/S I made, nor have I had any response to my written complaint to EE about this issue yet  🙄

[Peter_W]

Thanks for the update here, @YorkshireMidge 

When did you raise this complaint, and did you send this direct via the details on our complaints code of practice?

Peter