A pensioner claims she has been left without a vital landline phone after her internet provider 'cut it off' after upgrading her to fibre optic broadband.
Jackie Foran, 68, claims she is unable to use her upstairs phone at her home in Northenden - which she relies on to ring her son as she has mobility issues, and has on occasion found herself unable to move.
She also claims she is now unable to use her downstairs landline if she is watching her Sky TV, meaning her family have been left unable to contact her for long periods of time.
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Ms Foran claims her broadband supplier, Talk Talk, have since told her she will need to pay £6 a month if she wants to have the upstairs phone line reinstalled. The pensioner says she has spent countless hours on the phone to the company, but claims the issue still hasn't been resolved.
Speaking to the M.E.N, she said: "They rang me up in March and asked me if I wanted to upgrade to fibre optic broadband. I thought it would just be a case of them coming with a new router as nobody explained anything to me on the phone.
"They came and I didn’t realise they were going to remove the landline to plug it all in. Everything was working afterwards but my Sky Box wasn’t. They told me that if I wanted to have Sky I’d have to unplug my landline.
" When I went upstairs and tried to use the landline there it was completely dead. I didn’t know they were going to cut it off otherwise I never would have agreed. I phoned them the next day and said I didn’t want it anymore."
"They said if I pay £6 a month they can reinstall the landline but I never asked for them to cut it off and I never asked for this upgrade."
Jackie suffers with mobility issues in her legs and says she relies on using the phone upstairs to phone her son for help if she is unable to get downstairs or needs taking to hospital.
"I know a lot of young people have mobiles now but I don't and I need to use my landline," she said. "Talk Talk has said they can't send an engineer out because they can only come if there is a fault.
"For the landline to work at all now I have to unplug Sky. The other night I watched it and forgot to unplug it and my kids thought something really bad had happened as they couldn't get hold of me.
"This has been going on and on since March. I must have rung them hundreds of times since then. I just want to make other people who rely on landlines aware about this.
"People should be told about this before they can agree to new upgrades. I know people will call me old fashioned and that we need to move to fibre optic by 2025 but I could be dead by then."
The Manchester Evening News understands that since we contacted Talk Talk, Ms Foran is due to be sent further equipment and has been booked in with an engineer to solve the issue.
