Colour explosion

A bit of a crisis ridden and fraught day.

It all started when I tried to phone dad as I do every day but today couldn't get through. Not unusual but the problem persisted for some time. Alarms bells started ringing. I managed to get hold of their cleaner who happened to be there today rather than the usual Tuesday. She told me they couldn't also make outgoing calls. She switched on their mobile, which of course had a flat battery and then discovered that too wasn't working.

Virgin Media had managed to simultaneously and completely break my parents landline and mobile service. Bad enough, but that meant their critical lifeline service for their fall alert stopped working. Without that and their mobile they had no way of contacting anyone should there be any kind of emergency of which there have been many in recent months. Neither has the capacity to get outside on their own to summon help if needed. They simply couldn't now be left alone.

To be fair, VM reacted to my very first phone call when they immediately and significantly raising, as you would expect or at least hope, the priority of the problem. Sadly, after a couple of hours during which my sister went so someone was there to assist if needed, they said weren't able t fix it and it needed an engineer call out which they couldn't guarantee would be today. At least they tried and did so entirely on my say so (although, having done a job for many years where I was the one who ended up in Coroners court when things went badly wrong - I might just have made it crystal clear what now were the risks of leaving the landline faulty and made sure that was recorded in the ticket). Quiet but clear, firm and directed pressure. None of the usual customer care line shenanigans. 

So, with them having no telephone, I had no alternative but to travel up there with the intention of staying over simply as a safeguarding measure because myself sister couldn't stay. I was nearly there but about to hit a ten mile long and an hours worth of traffic jam on the motorway when I got a call to say that at least the landline was working. A great relief. VM had stayed with the problem and fixed it. Don't know how or what the problem was, but it was sorted. I won't lambast VM for the fault - telephone service is very much more than a pair of wires. Many points of potential failure exist.

I know that VM often have a poor reputation for dealing with faults, but, today, they reacted perfectly - maybe because I made them. I don't know. Now all I need to sort is the mobile and the fact that they are not declared as vulnerable people on the account .Tomorrow's job!

All the joys of being part of "The Sandwich Generation"!