Vulnerable Carlisle pensioners have been left without an emergency home response service for weeks, after a technical fault rendered hundreds of telephone landlines useless.

And, as Virgin Media attempted to fix the problem, some customers discovered yesterday that their numbers had suddenly changed – and they were getting calls for other people.

In the last few days, customers have heaped criticism on the firm’s response to the situation, with one man whose mother-in-law is affected spending nearly 70 hours on his mobile pleading with the firm to restore her line.

As many as 800 customers in Carlisle have been hit, though Virgin Media confirmed yesterday that all but 60 of those had been repaired.

Darren Haddock, 42, and his wife Natalie, 39, live with her 72-year-old disabled mother Judith Richardson, in Liddle Close, Lowry Hill.

The pensioner uses a mobility scooter and needs oxygen 24 hours a day.

Darren and his wife can usually leave Mrs Richardson on her own, because they have the back-up of her careline service.

But that service has been unavailable because the landline on which it depends has been inactive for the last three weeks.

And when the phone line began working again yesterday, the incoming calls went through to a completely different house in Lowry Hill.

“I reported the line wasn’t working three weeks ago,” said warehouse worker Darren. “Over the last three weeks, I’ve called them [using a mobile] repeatedly, and spent 67 hours on phone to them.

“They kept telling me they were sending out engineers. I got so fed up that last Thursday I made a complaint to Ofcom [the communications industry regulator].

“I’ve told Virgin Media my mother-in-law is disabled and explained I work, and my wife has to leave the house and so her mother relies on the careline service.

“Judith has a bracelet with a button she can press in an emergency.

“We also have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors which are linked to careline through the landline. The alarms are necessary because she uses an oxygen concentrator, and they’ve gone off six times in the past.”

Darren and his wife were due to attend a wedding last Saturday and, because the careline system was still not operational, they had to organise for people to stay with Mrs Richardson.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare,” he said. “They’ve kept guaranteeing it will be fixed.

“If they’d just told us that it was going to be a big problem we could have put in a temporary line.

"This shouldn’t be happening to vulnerable people. My mother-in-law suffers from anxiety and panic attacks and this isn’t helping.”

The man whose phone now responds to Mrs Richardson’s number is Philip Little, 70, of Naworth Drive.

He said: “My phone’s been off for 23 days.

“But in the last 10 minutes I’ve been getting calls for somebody else’s line [Mrs Richardson’s]. It’s all mixed up. The service from Virgin Media has been absolutely appalling."

Care company Artemis runs an emergency response service for more than 300 vulnerable customers in the Carlisle area, which is dependent on being connected to a landline.

Manager Louise Kelton said the problem meant several of the service’s customers were without their emergency lifeline for more than a week.

She said: “The people who have been affected are mostly in the Morton area. Their alarms wouldn’t have worked in an emergency situation. Fortunately, we’ve had no issues.

“But if they are not aware the line is down, they wouldn’t know their alarm wasn’t working. It’s obviously a worry."

Mrs Kelton confirmed that Virgin Media has not been in contact.

“If we’d known about it we could have done welfare checks on those people who are vulnerable,” she said.

“We’ve found out that one lady in Longsowerby who has dementia has a line that still isn’t working. Her line is linked to an alarm on her front door so we are alerted if she goes out.

“Thankfully, we have carers going in four times a day.”

Some customers hit by the phones fiasco are now calling for compensation. Patrick Tracey, 73, from St Edmunds Park, whose phone line was inactive for 11 days, said: “We should be compensated for the loss of service.”

A Virgin Media spokeswoman said all but 60 of the 800 or so landlines affected had been repaired. The current problem was down to a “secondary fault” discovered yesterday.

She added: “Virgin Media looks at cases on an individual basis and will provide compensation for those affected, based on the duration of loss of service.”

She said the firm had contacted careline customers and offered them mobile phones, adding: “The safety of our customers is of utmost importance to us and we apologise to those still affected by this issue.

“We are working hard to ensure that customers currently without service are restored as quickly as possible.”