The family of a 99-year-old Christchurch woman whose phone was accidentally cut off by a telco company are “deeply disappointed” it took days for what is essentially her lifeline to be reconnected.
Doreen Robertson, who lives alone, relies on her landline for dailycontact with friends and family and in case of an emergency.
However, it went down last Wednesday while a contractor was installing fibre to her property.
Spark told her family the phone would be back on within 12 hours but only after five days and several calls later was the phone reconnected.
Her son, Trevor Robertson, told Checkpoint his mother was angry and felt let down.
“One of the big things to maintain her quality of life is her ability to talk with others,” he said. “Her friends, her family have been unable to contact her.
“Her own daughter, in Auckland, has been unable to contact her. If anything had happened to her in that meantime, my sister, Fiona, would not have had any last contact with her mum.
“In our society, we are so reliant on this technology and we feel incredibly let down.”
Spark told RNZ there were two issues that caused Doreen Robertson’s landline to stop working after Enable’s fibre installation on July 2.
Spark cited a "mismatch of information" and incomplete wiring after a fibre installation as the cause.
The fibre upgrade was needed due to the Chorus copper withdrawal, which required Doreen Robertson to transition to fibre. However, Spark said there was a “mismatch of information” in the fibre order and the integrated wiring was not completed.
Despite Trevor Robertson calling Spark almost every day about his mum’s landline being down, and Spark being aware she was medically dependant, it took five days for her phone to be reconnected.
A Spark spokesperson said when it was alerted to the issue on July 3, they flagged it as a “medically dependent escalation”.
“However, we did not adequately keep Doreen and her family up to date with our investigation and estimated repair times. We will be going back and investigating why the call-backs didn’t happen and will be addressing these failures as appropriate,” they said.
“We have since flagged her in our system as medically dependent, so future interactions are handled with the appropriate care.”
Trevor Robertson noted that while he could call Spark to complain that the landline was down, his sister could not as she was not an authorised family member on their mother’s account.
“You need to make sure that you are down on the telecom account,” Trevor Robertson warned others. “Definitely with Spark, you need to be on their account otherwise they will ignore you.”
Spark said customers can get in touch with them to see if they are eligible to be registered as a vulnerable consumer or be placed on their medical dependency register.
