Sir – My 78-year-old mother moved house in May this year. A loyal BT customer of many years’ standing, she wished to retain BT’s services and take her ‘phone number with her to the new house.

To her immense frustration and increasing distress, although she was assured that this would be a straightforward process, my mother has had to cope with a flood of confusingly itemised bills, a bullying letter threatening suspension of her ‘phone line if she did not pay these bills (when she’d in fact sent prompt payment which our postal system had failed to deliver) and an engineer who needed internal access for four hours, contrary to BT’s assurance that the switchover could be done externally.

She has also had to navigate a ‘dedicated 1571 helpline’ which is of little help, given its absurdly complex automated options; I cannot begin to describe her tearful frustration, as a wearer of hearing aids, when she found, on finally managing to navigate this system, that the human voice on the other end was so heavily accented it was incomprehensible.

She has faced disturbance on the line (when it was finally activated), repeated broken promises to call back and — in spite of the fact that in 17 years as a loyal BT customer she has not once needed so much as a final reminder — suspension of her ‘phone line for non-payment of a bill.

My own efforts to complain on my mother’s behalf have so far led only to a couple of voicemails from BT’s complaints department (whose elusive email address I finally tracked down online) and a broken promise to contact me via email. My many calls back to the name/number I was given meet only a voicemail service.

It is now two months since my mother’s move and she still has no 1571 answerphone service. It seems to me that BT is failing in its duty of care to the elderly and disabled. We are beyond frustrated.

Julia Woods, Jericho