Agewelleast Avis 

My wife is ill and struggling with loneliness too, as she is now housebound and we rarely see anyone else. She turned to Age Well East for a befriender. The made all sorts of promises but did not follow through. It turns out that they have a faulty connection between their telephone friend machine and whoever they ring. We have seen complaints about it on NextDoor, Facebook etc. The same thing happened to us but instead of admitting it they told my wife it was all her fault and she must buy a new phone or get her phone repaired. This went on for months with one excuse after another. They moved on to insisting the phone (a normal landline you just plug in) had not been installed properly. Then they wanted to come and check if she had pressed the wrong buttons on it!!!!! Some of these ideas were totally ridiculous. Whenever my wife said about their connection being faulty they got angry with her. Months later they gave her a phone friend who loves going on holidays and that is all she wanted to talk about. Hardly suitable for someone who is stuck at home all of the time. Never once did they apologise for their many mistakes or taking so long.

REVIEW OF AGE WELL EAST

An old lonely lady registered with them hoping to get a telephone friend. They arranged for another person who was also seeking a telephone friend through them to phone connect with her at 12 noon tuesday. At 12.30 the phone rang and their volunteer shouted a the old lady - we will call her X - that she had rung at 12noon and she had not answered the phone. That she had pressed the various numbers, 1, 2, etc asked for and nothing had happened. So the call had been lost. X explained that he has an ordinary landline phone, there is no pressing this and that and nobody else has ever had a problem with phoning her. The volunteer continues to shout and rave at and says we cannot help you with this until you get your phone repaired or buy a new phone. The day after X sent them a polite email explaining she was disappointed, and what had happened. The volunteer reading this ignored it and got back to X and repeated she needs to get a new phone or get it repaired. X explained it again. They apologised and said WE HAVE A VOLUNTEER WHO UNDERSTANDS THIS MACHINE. SHE CAN SORT IT OUT. BUT ON HOLIDAY. IF YOU DONT MIND WAITING TILL 6TH SHE WILL BE BACK AND CAN SORT IT OUT SO WE CAN RING YOU AGAIN. OK? This lady was apologetic and understood it was not X's fault. X agreed and said if your telephone friend calls are so difficult I would prefer to have a visitor come over regularly if that is ok with you. That way I don't have to wait for this machine to be fixed or rely on it or wait. Yes of course said the volunteer. Good idea. I will put that down and you will hear soon. Time went by and 6th came and went. on 7th X sent a polite email saying hope to hear from you soon.

In the meantime X had put a post on NEXTDOOR where another lady had said oh my dad uses that service at AGE WELL and he gets that problem all the time when he connects up with his phone friend. It's their machine.

X receives a phone call from AGE WELL with a new volunteer who has supposedly heard all about it. This volunteer said we are sorry but we cannot connect you to a phone friend because of your phone. Your phone is the problem. It needs to be replaced or repaired! So much for the past few weeks waiting and explaining. X explained this was NOT the case yet again. You would think they already know all this from connecting with others. X reminded them that they had agreed X would have a visiting friend so that this machine/phone would not keep being blamed for hold ups. Oh said the volunteer, it says here you want a phone friend, if you want to change it to a visiting friend I will have to change the notes. I can do that now. It might take a while.

X did not know whether to scream or smile. Before X retired she used to run a very successful business with 200 staff and could not understand why so little caused so much hassle, problems and mistakes and took so long.

x was 68 when she applied for the friend, 69 now, will she reach 70 before it happens?

Age Well are now advertising for people to use their service, yet they have had people waiting ages who they have not helped yet. Some are extremely lonely, some have difficult health conditions, they are vulnerable and need all the help they can get. Would it not be fairer to help those before looking for new people?