Exhuasted with BT/EE support for Digital Phone CLI issues

[adrianmarsh]

Just sharing our story with EE/BT so far:

I moved my mum from a working PSTN/FTTC Plus.net connection over to the new fiber connectivity.  We started the process in January but Openreach failed to turn up twice and then turned up at a bad time unannounced.  Eventually we got there in May.

The setup inside the house seemed to go fairly smoothly.  It wasn't until a few days after we realised that Calling Line Identity wasn't working.

The setup:   A BT Paragon 500 phone into the back of the EE Smarthub Plus 7 (physically to the BT socket on the hub).  A BT 4500 DECT base unit connected via an EE supplied Wifi adapter, with 3 hand units.

We noticed that 9/10 incoming calls would just show as "incoming call", no number.  But, just occasionally the number will show, so it's not 100% failure.

Outgoing calls seem to work just fine, and incoming audio calls work, most of the time.  However I have seen where I answered the call on one dect phone, and the other phones kept ringing.  The main issue though is the CLI.

I'm exhausted talking to BT.  I've spent hours on the phone with them repeating the same tests, the same arguments.  At least 6 calls now, usually 1-2 hours per call. It takes that long to finally be put through to "New IT Tech".. who then go to a team called the "offline team", who you can't talk to at all and don't listen to the facts.

We've reset the hub, we've factory rebooted it, they've taken CLI features off of the account and added them back on.

During all of this, the support people have told me privately that the new Digital Phone system has multiple issues, in its management systems and in the backend of it.  One even offered to cancel our contract and move us to an "older" system, which would mean replacing the hub and changing contract.. but all to get away from the "new system".

Yesterday, despite telling me there's nothing wrong with the hub - they're now sending me a new hub.  Except, I don't live there and so its a 400 mile round trip to go an replace/setup a hub, that probably won't fix their issue.

And the repeated claim from some of the support teams:  "It's your phones... they're too old".   Weird, because up until the move, both phones worked perfectly fine on PSTN CLI.  I've has some of the engineerings agree with me that it's not the phones, but some insist it absolutely is.  And they really don't like when I argue back that, even if it IS the phones, these are BT phones, working to standards that BT implemented, and claims to support in Digitial Phone.

I've now hit a wall with BT support.  if the new hub doesn't fix the issue, I don't know where this goes.

What's interesting.. one of the engineers, kindly, sent us a Battery backup, and in that package is a wifi-based phone.  And, on that, the CLI shows correctly for every incoming call at the same time the other phones don't.  So if that phone can show it, but the phones working via adapters/plugging into the back don't, to me, that would indiciate the issue is with the hub, or more directly, the hub software.  That also helps confirm that it's not an EE/BT network issue, as the CLI must be getting to the hub for the wifi phone to work.

But the BT Support engineers are adament that the hub software is bug free and works 100% of the time.

They also insist that I'll have to replace the phones, at our own cost, never mind the fact that the phones work fine and it seems clear it's the new system at fault.  They actually argued with me yesterday that both phones, two different models must of failed, at exactly the same time, with exactly the same CLI symptom, coincidentially at the same time as we moved to the new hub and setup..  it couldn't possibly be the fault of the hub.  I'm flabergasted bt that response and conclusion, with no evidence to support it.  We ended up ending the call as both I and the support agent weren't getting anywhere and they kept insisting they couldn't do any more (perhaps pass up to the team that the hub has a bug?)

I guess I now have to wait and see for when the new hub arrives and test with that, and try to find a friend/neighbour still with a PSTN connection so I can prove the old phones work just fine.

I'm bitterly disappointed with the whole experince so far.

For the forum:  If anyone knows if there's a list of what phones are/not supported, that'd be useful.  We were told originally that 99.9% of all phones will work just fine.