[alternative titles considered: BT is failing people; or, late stage capitalism is a human catastrophe]

Roughly three weeks ago, I posted this

The tech sector is massively failing older people.

I just spent over an hour trying to assist an elderly neighbour with her home phone. The provider’s website and contact phone number make it as difficult as possible to speak to a human, defaulting to mobile phone based text workflows.

The earliest the provider can have an engineer visit is in 3 weeks.

Very friendly humans when you talk to them, but a completely broken system.

— Andy Piper (@andypiper) 2026-05-05T10:46:35.743Z

Today, was the follow-up.

We have an elderly neighbour. She’s smart, capable, and kind – a lovely person to having living next door! She is, however, older, and we like to keep an eye on things and ensure that she has everything that she needs.

She needs a home phone line – it’s what she is used to using for staying in touch with family and friends. She’s somewhat tech-capable – she has an older PC which just about manages to run Windows 10 that she primarily uses to do things online as needed (that’s something I’m holding off changing too much, as it works and it is what she is used to); she has an iPhone; she shares photos and messages with friends via various apps.

BT, OpenReach, Royal Mail, et al – you are failing to look after people like our neighbour.

Quick catch-up to where we were at the start of today – our neighbour messaged us at the end of April asking whether our home phone / landline had stopped working. We had nothing useful to tell her, because we only have an internet connection and our mobile phone. We didn’t hear after that for a few days, but at the start of May she asked me to go and have a look.

There was no dial tone. I knew that BT was in the process of doing the digital voice transition (replacing the old copper wires with full fibre to every property), and found some messages that she’d missed informing her that an engineer would visit to install fibre – she hadn’t replied to confirm, so that was deemed to be cancelled. We then went on a lengthy journey of simply trying to talk to somebody at BT about her account… every avenue seemed to end up in BT transferring us to a text message and online chat system. In the end, we did manage to speak to someone on the phone, I explained the situation, and – despite my clear communication that this was a vulnerable customer – we were told they could have an engineer visit, in 3 weeks.

Today was the day! I’d booked the entire “between 8am and 1pm” slot in my calendar so that I could pop round to supervise and help explain what was going on for her. When I hadn’t heard by 12.30pm, I decided to go round anyway, expecting the engineer to have been and gone, but that she hadn’t wanted to bother me; but, no, nothing. At 12.45 we decided to call BT – they said they’d escalate to OpenReach (OpenReach called while we were on hold to BT, to say they were running late and would come in the afternoon).

I was about to head back next door and wait to be called, when the engineer arrived – late, but within 15 minutes of the appointment window.

He did check for emergency alerting devices that might have depended on the old phone system, but didn’t recognise the hardware used by my neighbour, so took a photo and called his base in order to get a green light to continue with the install. In the meantime I’d a) identified that it was not connected to the phone line; b) clocked that it had the IMEI details for 2 separate SIM cards on the back so probably used the cellular network; c) checked the device details online to confirm that it was not an issue.

Three hours later – fibre connected. Note that I’d had to move things round in the house in order for the engineer to install it the connection. Some small (!) issues – BT’s “welcome package” containing the new digitally-capable home phone and ethernet cable had not arrived – delayed, either by BT in dispatch, or by Royal Mail (they appeared to blame one another; but, my friend and I agreed that Royal Mail’s delivery service in our area is now terrible: 1 or at most 2 deliveries at week) – so, I’d had to fetch a spare CAT5 cable from next door. Also, the OpenReach engineer didn’t know that he needed to enable “FTTP Full-Fibre mode” on the router, and I had to get that done. He also didn’t seem aware of the concept of an IP address , calling it “the long code on the back of the router to configure it”.

To be clear – lovely man, got his job done, left things tidy – but… he left without solving the problem.

So, my friend and I made another call, which this time somehow ended up at the EE broadband department. After explaining the whole thing all over again, he transferred us to someone at BT “proper”, and we lodged a complaint.

We’re assured that the landline will start working by midnight. I shall check in the morning.

I’m furious about this whole situation!

These organisations have left an older member of the community potentially at risk – as she said to me today, she didn’t ask for any of this, she’s always been a customer of BT, she doesn’t give out her mobile number, and she depends on the landline. She’s been left without any coverage – or, apparently, care or attention – by these companies, for weeks.

Progress? and at what cost? (noting also that it is the hottest day of the year)

As I left this afternoon, I said that I’m off to central London this evening to meet some of my fellow members of the Society for Hopeful Technologists – because we’re determined that technology is a tool that must serve society as a whole, not leave people behind…

  • If anyone from BT, OpenReach or Royal Mail reads this – j’accuse!