A woman with mobility issues says she has been left without a vital landline phone after it was "cut off" by her provider during an upgrade. Jackie Foran, 68, said she had been left unable to use her upstairs phone at her home in Northenden, Manchester.
Jackie relies on it as, due to mobility issues, she might need to make an emergency call to her son if she is unable to move. She also claimed that she could no longer use her downstairs landline phone if she was watching Sky TV, leaving her uncontactable for family.
The problems started when Jackie was after upgraded to fibre optic broadband, reports the M.E.N. She claims that she did not ask for the upgrade.
Jackie said her 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. She said she had spent hours on the phone to the company, but 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 have 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 it contacted Talk Talk, Jackie is due to be sent further equipment and has been booked in with an engineer to solve the issue.
