On 1 May I received a text message from BT saying someone had applied to take over our landline.

I initially thought it was a scam but decided to ring up and check as our landline is very important to us. We live in a rural location, with poor mobile reception, and my husband is a GP who needs to be able to contact patients.

I was assured the landline would be OK but I returned home on 17 May to find it had been disconnected – and BT still haven’t managed to restore it.

It appears our neighbour applied for BT broadband at the start of May. His address doesn’t come up on the Royal Mail postcode finder, so someone must have put his details on to our account.

Since then I have spent hours on the phone to BT but no one ever reads the notes on our account. I have lost track of the number of people I have spoken to but they don’t give me their contact details so there is no way of contacting them again.

BT has installed and removed Digital Voice (its broadband-based phone service) several times but it never works. Now it is telling me that we may not be able to get our original telephone number back.

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I am beginning to lose hope we will ever have a functioning landline again. I am fed up standing on one leg in the kitchen trying to catch mobile reception through the open window. Please can you help?

VL, Chevington

Your family has a working landline again after a ridiculous four-and-a-half-month hiatus, thanks to our help, with the connection via your old copper phone line.

BT says it is “very sorry” your landline was disconnected and for the time taken to restore the service. “We’ve reached out to them and provided a dedicated point of contact to deal with their complaint,” it says. “The landline has been reconnected with their original number restored.”

A fault with your broadband has also been repaired. Now your phone and internet are working, you are discussing compensation with BT. You are very grateful for our help, as is your GP husband, who no longer has to head to the bottom of garden in search of a mobile phone signal to check on patients.

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