Family furious after company disconnects 80-year-old B.C. woman’s phone

The family of an 80-year-old Squamish, B.C., woman living with early-stage dementia is furious with Telus for leaving their mother without a telephone for a week.

Shannon Allardyce told Global News that the company disconnected their mother Beverly’s landline, leaving her isolated and distressed.

“This is very distressing, causing a lot of anxiety, upset, lots of tears, she has been very sad because she can’t communicate and she feels scared if she runs into a situation of an emergency … if she happens to fall or get hurt and need help she can’t call out,” Allardyce said.

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Allardyce said she spent upwards of 20 hours on the phone with various Telus representatives, who she said initially claimed the problem could be linked to an upgrade to fiberoptic cables in the area.

But she said that eventually she was told her mother’s phone number of four years had been reassigned to other customers, not once, but twice.

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Allardyce said her mother, who doesn’t have a cellphone and finds them confusing, was left with no working phone service in her home.

“Her social outings are her phone calls, she talks to her siblings almost daily, her friends call her and she has hours of conversation and laughter with them, and right now she doesn’t have any form of social interaction at all,” she said.

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On Thursday, eight days after losing her connection, the family’s calls for help were answered.

Telus declined an interview request, instead replying in a statement that Beverley’s connection and original phone number had been restored.

“Ms. Allardyce was scheduled to migrate from copper to fibre, however cancelled the migration right before the installation, which triggered an unusual error in our system,” the company said.  We understand the importance of connectivity, and are very sorry for the issue. Ms. Allardyce’s original phone number and service have been completely restored.

Her family believes it was Global’s questions to the phone company that helped resolve the issue.

Allardyce said that while she’s glad her mother is reconnected to the world, others in the same situation may not be so lucky.

“Absolutely unacceptable,” she said.

“What happens to the other elderly folks that have nobody to advocate for them and they are vulnerable? What happens to those folks?”