DJ

The first two cordless phones we tried  (Doro Matras) just made a clicking sound instead of a dial tone you couldn’t ring out or in.   The latest is a Siemens which has the problem with going straight to Free voicemail. We have no filters fitted to any extensions other than the main socket to which the Freebox is connected.   Most people round here seem to keep their France Telecom line for incoming calls and use the phone connected to the box for outgoing which is what we shall probably have to try next - a shame as it incurrs another abonnement of 13€ a month which is an unwelcome chunk out of my pension.   I also have tried the commands via the telephone handset and either they are suspended or just engaged.  

The original power supply failed after only five days - the one connected now is a replacement sent by Free who charged 10€ for the privilege. Where can I get another power supply as presumably getting yet another one from Free will not necessarily resolve the problem?

The set works fine in all respects with the corded phone, you can disable voicemail, increase or decrease the ring time as you please although, as you say, the ringtime is shorter than stated. I'm afraid for some reason it's taken against me getting a cordless and nothing will change it's mind..

We were ditched by France Telecom which was not our intention but the sales pitch given to us by Free was ambiguous in the extreme and FT cut us off before we could draw breath.   We pay Free 29.99€ a month for cheap calls and broadband internet. There are 4 phone sockets in the house none of these work unless plugged into the freebox so we can only use one extension at a time hence the need for a cordless.   There is no answerphone built into the Siemens however there is a function called voicemail which supposedly tells you how many messages you have on your servers voicemail (which I’m beginning to think maybe the root of the problem) and enables you to call  **1 by pressing and holding down key 1.  However if you  don’t enable this function it makes no difference. The old  FT (not cordless) handset works fine through the Freebox and responds to any instructions given to it through the Free website.   I’m beginning to think that the only solution other than trying every cordless phone until we find one that works is to re-activate the FT line and take incoming calls on that. However FT will probably charge an and arm and a leg to reconnect and won’t scramble to get it done quickly either.

I realise that but what difference does it make whether one is degroupage or not? There is no option on the phone to change the number of rings as far as I can see. DJ

It appears that we are degroupage non prévu whatever that means. DJ

Hi Everyone We do not have a capacitor in the main socket'. As far as I remember we are in a zone degroupee - nothing in any information received from Free tells us what zone we are in but as we live in a very rural area of the Dordogne I assume we are degroupéed. We have done away with France Telecom - a mistake as they cut the line off within an hour of us phoning to sign up with Free. Now we have no phone  during power cuts.. We are not interested in the television service and so have nothing connected although there is a scart socket on the back of the Freebox which I presume is for the tele service. I have just plugged back in our old telephone and been back to the Gestion des Service page and disabled the voicemail. It worked - ie the old phone rang indefinitly and did not go to voicemail at all. So at least we can now recieve incoming calls on that phone. However when we plug in the cordless phone it takes no notice of the instruction given to it on the website and does the same - rings once and goes to voicemail. It seems that the Freebox is just not compatable with the Siemens phone. This might seem to be a trivial thing to worry about but this is a very large rambling house with 5 acres of grounds so a cordless phone really is a must. Thank you all very much for your efforts. DJ

Hi Chancer and NormanH Thanks for your suggestions. The old France Telecom Amarys handset, which we've had for at least fifteen years, works with the Freebox as it should, it rings about 6 times (20 seconds) then goes to Voicemail. The two first Doro Matra cordless phones we bought did not work with the freebox at all. We bought the Siemens on recomendation from friends who have a similar one which works with their Freebox. I have changed the options in the Gestion des Services page of the Free website as recomended by the French guy on the brakstar forum. I have done it several times and rebooted or hard rebooted the freebox each time and it makes no difference. In fact it seems to make no difference whatever options I select on this page - I have tried the option to disable the Voicemail altogether but with no effect. The Freebox we have is a V4 we only have the one box so I  assume the HD you mention is a separate hard drive which we don't have. The phone is connected to a filter which is connected to the wall socket at one end and the Freebox at the other as per Free's installation instructions. There are three other extension sockets in the house which are individually connected to a junction box situated where the line comes into the house. The was no mention in Free's instructions as to disconnecting any extensions or fitting filters and as the old phone works perfectly well it does not seem logical that these would have any effect just because we've changed the phone. However logic does not seem to apply to some aspects of French technology. Blood pressure is mounting as frustration increases. DJ  

Hi Thanks for your response but we did activate the line through the Free website. We've now bought a Siemens Gigaset AS180 Duo which works fine for outgoing calls but incoming calls go straight to answerphone after one ring. This apparently is quite a common problem. We have followed the advice given on a thread on this French forum http://www.brakstar.com/forum/braktopic_2014.html  which works for some but unfortunately not for us. The operators on the Free assistance line are at best unhelpful and incompetent and at worst downright rude. Any suggestions please as we seem to have run out of options. DJ

We have recently had a freebox installed and although  our old France Telecom  Amarys handset works we want to change it for a cordless duo or trio. Neither of the phones we have bought so far will work both of them were marked as ADSL Box compatible - instead of a dial tone we just get a clicking noise. None of the phones on the list supplied by Free seem to be available anymore - although the Free Assistance helpline assures us that this list is up to date. Anybody got any idea what the problem is or a new phone that definitely works with the box?