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Call-screening landline phone not working on Digital Voice

organisedjim
Investigator
Investigator

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?

40 REPLIES 40

@YorkshireMidge It's just a waiting game to see if complaints get's back or it get's closed, if the 6+ ever get's updated or someone post's that it has followed the 7 Pro version will let you know, just incase a newer FW update squares away the DV side of the operation and your Truecall plays nice or not.

Hi @Peter_W , thanks for reaching out. 

Both complaints I have raised were sent by letter to the 6 Camberwell Way address as per your CCoP.  The reason it was written is both contain diagnostic information on how to test for the bugs so it gives engineers the best possible chance of reproducing it, identifying the root cause, and fixing it.  They also cross-reference the postings on here so engineers can see the full picture from other people too (for the record, I do appreciate the difficulties of spotting insideous firmware bugs in amongst large numbers of other day-to-day faults and user issues).  

1st complaint/bug relating to port forwarding - dated and posted on 22nd July.  See the following thread on that one.  I got a text on 25th August saying EE are looking into a complaint from me, and  another text the same day saying it was now closed (?!). 

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/Migration-from-PlusNet-to-EE-CCTV-port-forwarding-i...

2nd complaint/bug relating to this issue - dated and posted 1st September. 

Observations as follows:

1. The last lady I spoke to in C/S regarding this issue was helpful and understanding, but didn't appear to have an escalation route for faults of THIS particular nature (i.e. not resolvable through sending out a new hub or passing it to Openreach). If that route DOES actually exist, it isn't visible to customers nor is there any feedback from it.  

From an ITIL perspective, I have no objection to my Incident report being closed if there is a workaround available (which there is in both cases) AND the Incident has been linked to either a Problem Report or a Known Error. As far as I can tell, my Incident report was just closed and that seems to have been @organisedjim  experience too.  I'd expect BT Consumer to be aware of ITIL best practive, since that methodology has been used extensively in BT managed service business for many years within the BT Enterprise line of business. 

2. It seems that a lot of aggravation for us , you as moderators , and your colleagues in the various customer service centres, could be addressed with a bit of openess and honesty flowing down from the product line - such as one or more stickies on here detailing what hub bugs are known about and are fixed in the next release, what bugs have been confirmed and will be included in a future release, and what potential bugs you are currently investigating - and any workarounds for these bugs.  The port forwarding one is a classic example where I found the workaround was a few minute job once I became aware what the issue was. 

3. There are three broadband hubs sat under the BT Consumer line of business  - branded BT, Plusnet, and EE - yet the EE branded one *seems* to have problems the other two do not.  Someone in BT product line needs to be explaining why - especially when BT is busy migrating thousands of Plusnet users like me over to EE where we are finding functionality that previously worked is now broken.  That is not a defendable position and has a left a very poor first impression. 

Hope this helps. Thanks. 

Peter_W
EE Community Support Team

Thanks for taking the time to explain all of that, @YorkshireMidge 

We do usually say up to 10 days for complaints to be investigated, but it's concerning to hear that the one you submitted in July seemed to be closed with no response. 

Please let us know if you hear anything within the next few days, and if you still don't get any further updates we can look into getting this chased at our end. 

Peter

organisedjim
Investigator
Investigator

I had another attempt at getting this fixed with EE support - not sure why they closed the original ticket - but after a bit of back and forth they've said they "can't fix it" (or maybe just don't know how to).  So we'll be looking to switch to another provider whose hub doesn't have this flaw.  We will also submit a formal complaint as we were told that Digital Voice and FTTP would be an improvement, but as we're now getting scam calls that were previously blocked, it's clearly not an improvement.

@organisedjim  On the basis that the fault doesn't exist on the BT Smart Hub 2,  and there are other bugs identified on the EE branded hub, I certainly don't believe what you have been told. 

Once I'd proven it worked on a BT Smart Hub 2 I'd borrowed to test with, I spotted a brand new one on ebay for £15 and grabbed it, and that seems to be about the going rate for a good one.   Make no mistake,  I'm seriously hacked off that I had to do that - but I weighed it up against the fact there were no guarantees that I wouldn't (given I have the much older TrueCall unit)  have problems with other providers as per @Jones01 experiences with other ATAs.  On the positive side, I have a hub that looks (IMO) a lot neater than the EE branded big ugly black box. 

What is hacking me off even more is my mother-in-laws migration from Plusnet is appointed for the 30th so I may well have to do the same again to get her Decor 2600 call blocker phone working. 

@Peter_W  Nothing whatsoever on my complaint BTW.  In @organisedjim case, that is a BT branded product still on sale that won't work on a BT/EE service and that really doesn't look good. 

 

 

@YorkshireMidge Would look out for another BT Smart Hub 2 again, think your MIL would be sent the EE Smart Hub 6+ version SH31B for a FTTC copper connection, but you will know that just a couple day's before the PN switchover. BT2 and the PN2 are virtually like for like with the BT version having the ATA port working, and it's really not a bad hub spec wise for it's age. Tried and trusted FW on it although has had a couple updates to get the EE app semi functional working/connecting to it.

@YorkshireMidge Was re-reading the post and seen you said MIL was having a FF Full Fibre install, so in theory it would be the SH32B version off the 6+ Hub, one without the DSL interface on it...

Thanks - yes, shes going from copper all the way to the exchange, to full fibre. 

YorkshireMidge
Skilled Contributor
Skilled Contributor

Confirmation as predicted, that the bug would also affect legacy answering machines when interrogated remotely from a mobile. 

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Digital-Home-Phone/Answerphone-remote-access/td-p/1641763

@Peter_W  Did you happen to get anywhere with this?  Still no response to my complaint through the official channels.  Thanks. 

Christopher_G
EE Community Support Team

Hi @YorkshireMidge 

I'm sorry to hear that you haven't heard back from your complaint. I recommend giving our customer support team a call, so they can make sure everything is logged correctly. They'll be able to make sure the correct processes are followed before raising a ticket for this problem.

Keep us posted on what happens please.

Chris