Why, oh why, did my telephones die?

June 25, 2011 6:18 PM

Our landline cordless phones all went dead except for one. What's up with that?

We have 6 cordless phones throughout our house. A month ago, all of them except the one in the base station stopped charging and became bricks at the same time. The one in the base station still works fine. If you try charging any of the other phones in the base, not only does it not work, but we can no longer receive any incoming phone calls.

Why did they all stop charging and go dead at once? Should we buy new batteries, do something else, or dump them all and buy new phones? These phones are probably at least four years old.

posted by clarkstonian to Technology (5 answers total)

That's about the right length of time for buying new batteries. The fact that they all went out at once is probably coincidence mixed with the battery lifespan.
posted by argybarg at 6:45 PM on June 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Batteries for sure.
posted by rhizome at 7:30 PM on June 25, 2011

If the phones are all the same, try the battery pack from the working one in the others. Personally, if five batteries in five different machines failed *simultaneously*, I'd by a lotto ticket.

Still, people do win the lottery.
posted by codswallop at 7:44 PM on June 25, 2011

You may need to re-register your phones with the base station so that they are recognized. The phones require registering to link a unique code so that they don't respond, say, to your next door neighbor's base station. Check you user manual or download one from the manufacturer's web site and look up the registration procedure. As others have said, it could be a combination of end of life batteries and losing the registration codes.
posted by JackFlash at 7:44 PM on June 25, 2011

We had 2 handsets (of 3) die at the same time, and it was battery-related.
posted by cabingirl at 10:05 PM on June 25, 2011