Help me Fight the Good Fight - please read!

[r3dh3d]

Don't know if there are enough folk online atm for this to work but a I need a quick survey/show of hands. I need responses from anyone who has a person with a disability in the house, and is in any way dependant on the telephone. Eg for medical help or if you can't get out for some reason.

Are you aware of BT's "Priority Fault Repair" scheme? Are you registered for it?

Can you post a quick response to this thread, please?

I need to do a quick straw poll to back up a formal complaint, and I need to start a formal complaint in order to get Ofcom involved in BT's disability policy which is tbh broken, but they aren't going to listen to little me. So am looking for a show of hands, and as many hands as possible please. If you want to answer but aren't sure if you qualify (eg you have a disabled child but are maybe not dependant on the phone) then please do answer too, but explain a bit so I don't count you in the wrong pile.

Does that make sense?

Thanks!

dd3 is disabled but not sure we fall into the reliant on a phone category, she doesn't have medical emergencies and we live in London so never too far away from anything and we've never heard of this but have a bt phone contract. Funny, I've had more info on their brand new infinity broadband than I could ever wish for but have never recieved anything from them on disability.

I wasn't aware of it either, although I would have played the disability card if it had become a problem.
Like zzzzz my DD has epilepsy and calling of ambulances has been a regular feature in our lives - but we do have option of mobile phones so can't imagine it being a major problem for us.
It's worse when the electric goes off as we have a lift to get DD to her bedroom and hoists - so we are very stuck in a power cut. We are registered as a priority with power company but it just means they will get a generator if the power is going to be off for a long time or if there are going to be 'planned outages'

No I wasn't aware of it either, tho we're with sky for phone.

Wonder if they have anything similar ?

Sky must have something similar. It's a legal-ish requirement; they are granted a licence (it's not technically called a licence now but it amounts to the same thing) and one of the conditions of the licence is priority fault repair.

not aware of it.

have a disabled person in the house (dd1) -but no medical urgency (touch wood), so not dependent on the phone.

not aware - BT customer (DH works for BT)

BT customer here - not aware and therefore not registered

Not aware of it. Not in dependent category at the moment but our phone(BT) went down last year when we were waiting for urgent messages re admssion for DS. It was difficult as not all agencies involved had our mobile numbers. I explained situation and I think repair was a bit quicker and they rerouted calls to our mobile but they did not tell me about priority service. I would have thought 'seriously sick child' would be a trigger. DS is disabled so am I and DH.

Aware but we don't qualify - DS has anyphalactic allergies but he is not counted as disabled and we are not housebound.

alison - can I ask how you found out about it?

We had major problems with the line - we pay BT line rental and tiscali for calls and broadband. They were each blaming the other and I got very upset with BT call centre in India and demanded to talk to UK. They had an engineer call me who came out - eventually found fault at call centre and told me about it. We talked to BT who confirmed we didn't qualify. However we did get letter from GP which was sent to BT and they are aware of a need to try to prioritise us but won't actually put us on the scheme, but it does help a bit if I have a problem ( I did again and they were slightly more helpful than the 3 week standard wait - last time it was 3 days I think)

wouldn't qualify, but not aware. might be worth reposting on the elderly care board (whatever it's called) as they would have same issues with frail relatives.

Not aware here either.

not aware of it have two disabled dc but are not specifically dependent on phone for emergencies

Not aware, four people with disabilities in the house. Dd2 in particular has been blue lighted more than once.

It took my sister-in-law a full day on the phone to BT to get them to admit that they did have a priority system for getting a phone installed if someone relied on it. Our Aunt needed it as she was being moved to a flat on her own at short-notice and required it in order for her emergency button to work.