It's about time

A cordless phone and VoIP service has driven one customer around the bend, writes Nick Galvin.

As we sift through the Troubleshooter inbox and its endless catalogue of technological snafus, often it's the minor troubles that catch our eye.

Thus it was with Frances Bottrell and her cordless phone. As Frances explained, she had recently "gone naked" - that is, switched her internet service provider (ISP) to iiNet and elected to make and receive all her telephone calls over the internet using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). About the same time she bought a Uniden cordless phone, which was when her dramas started.

"Every time I receive an incoming call the phone changes time," she says. "Constantly it resets itself for two hours earlier. If you miss two or three calls a day there is no way of knowing when they called."

Bottrell's first port of call was Uniden but ironically there is no contact number on its website. Bottrell emailed the support address but to no avail.

"I rang iiNet, who assured me it was nothing to do with the connection but the support person said he had sort of, kind of, heard of that happening and to contact Uniden," Bottrell said.

At this point she contacted us.

We managed to find a phone number for Uniden in the White Pages and spoke to marketing manager Mark Willis.

He chased down the issue with his support staff. They had heard of the problem before, it turns out. But the fault was with the ISP, they said.

"Basically, what is happening is that the software which controls VoIP has an incorrect day/time stamp within it," said the support person. "Every time the customer receives a call, the day and time stamp on the phone software is changed."

By now feeling she was trapped in some sort of techno Groundhog Day, Bottrell called iiNet again to be told the problem was definitely not at their end.

Righto, then. Pausing only to grab the deerstalker hat and pipe, we called Andy McIntyre, general manager sales and marketing at iiNet. He in turn put the issue to his technical staff. Their theory was that the problem lay with the router Bottrell was using.

"They believe the time zone ... is not set correctly and is quite possibly the culprit, as it is sending incorrect time information to the handset when the SIP [Session Initiation Protocol] call comes in," McIntyre said.

One of the iiNet boffins gave Bottrell a call and talked her through the process of resetting the time zone for her modem and, as if by magic, all was suddenly well.

To say Bottrell was pleased would be something of an understatement.

We love a happy ending.