Caller ID stopped working

[BillBees]

Caller ID stopped working on my landline about 2 weeks ago. It is still showing as enabled in my account, but all incoming calls simply show “Incoming call” on all my ‘phones. 

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi

So glad this has continued to work correctly after the engineering work at your exchange.

Regards,

Karl. 

[BillBees]

Hi Michelle (and Karl), apologies for the delay in replying. Since the engineer performed a “lift and shift” at the exchange it has been working reliably.   So hopefully that’s put it to bed.  Thanks for your help. 

Regards,

Mike

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi Mike,

Just checking back in to see how you're getting on?

Thanks

Michelle

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi @BillBees 

How are things today ?

Thanks  

Karl. 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi Mike,

I'm glad to hear this and I'll also check back in with you on Tuesday to see how you're getting on.

Thanks

Michelle

[BillBees]

Hi Michelle,

Yes I had a very helpful call this morning - they are going to send an engineer to the exchange to swap the line, hopefully that will fix it.  I will get a courtesy call on Tuesday morning to see if it is sorted.  Thanks for your help and fingers crossed.

Mike

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi,

Can I confirm that you've now been contacted please?

Thanks

Michelle

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hello,

Will do and again my apologies that you weren't contacted. I've fed this back too.

Thanks

Michelle

[BillBees]

Thankyou very much Michelle. If they can contact me (Mike) directly that will work a lot better.  My contact details are in the Private Notes section of Bill Bees’ profile. 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Good morning,

I am so sorry and also very annoyed that the team did not make contact with you after we passed over your availability. I have escalated this to our CEO Complaints Team and have asked that this is managed as a complaint and that you are contacted ASAP to progress this fault further.

Thanks

Michelle

[BillBees]

I was there from 8:30 to 11:45 today and nothing happened.

As I said, for the faults dept to call us and simply repeat what we did several months ago would be a waste of time anyway.  The only way to get this solved is for a real engineer to look for a fault somewhere between and including the exchange, green box and the property.  Please tell me how this can be escalated so that this happens.  We are now coming to the conclusion that the only  way to get this fixed is to change provider. 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Thank you. I've passed this over now and have asked the team to book a callback in for this date and time for you.

Michelle

[BillBees]

Thanks Michelle.  I suspect there isn’t much point in them contacting me when I’m not at the property, so if we can say next Wednesday (16th Oct) between 9 and 11am that would be good.   If that changes I’ll let you know. 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi Mike,

I'm really sorry. When would be the best time to contact you and I'll ask our Faults Escalation Team to contact you directly?

Michelle

[BillBees]

Hi Debbie,

Yes I have tried a different phone, twice.   Please please read back through the thread to see what has already been done.

I (Mike, Bill’s son) have spent a lot of time trying to get progress on this.  If it simply goes back to the faults team then I’m afraid that if I will be asked to waste more time repeating the same things that we have already tried over the last few months.  If that happens I’m going to go pop!   Clearly there is an intermittent hardware fault somewhere, so this needs escalating beyond the normal faults process as we have been through all of that before.

As stated before my father’s hearing is not very good such that he simply cannot understand voices from people he does not know well on the ‘phone, so it is pointless for anyone from TalkTalk to phone him. 

Mike

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi Mike

I'm sorry to hear this.

As this is intermittently happening, have you tested with a different phone?

Would you like me to escalate this back to our faults escalation team?

[BillBees]

There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it.  Sometimes unplugging the phone and plugging it back in again makes caller ID work again, sometimes not.  When it does start working again it’s usually only for a couple of hours and then it’s gone again.  Most of the time it doesn’t work.  So there must be some sort of intermittent fault somewhere, presumably either at the exchange or the green box.  I’ve searched intermittent caller ID on the internet and it’s not that uncommon across various ISPs, usually fixed by OpenReach doing something somewhere. 

Mike

[Chris-TalkTalk]

OK thanks MIke, please let us know how you get on

Chris

[BillBees]

Further update to that previous message. Today it worked a couple of times and then stopped so I got him to unplug the phone from the wall and power it off again, count to 10 and plug it back in.  Called him back and it was working. I’ve told him to just do one of those things (either unplug phone from wall or power cycle the phone) next time it stops working and see if it starts working again. 

[BillBees]

I went round yesterday and took my phone set with me to try again (last time I did this it made no difference, still no caller ID). Before logging in to his account and turning caller ID off and on again I  unplugged his phone, plugged mine in, called it from my mobile and caller ID worked.  Swapped back to his phone, caller ID still working. 2 hours later, no caller ID.  Unplugged his phone from the socket and power cycled it, plugged it back in and caller ID works again.  So it’s intermittent and just possible that unplugging the phone resets something which makes it work again for a short while - not really enough evidence of that though.