Faulty BT line for six months! Any advice please?

bootsaholic

About six months ago I had no dialling tone on my land line for a few days so I rang BT and they said they would send an engineer out the following day and the call out charges would be £116 plus £99 an hour for any fault if not found to be the external line. I explained that I was away the following day but after doing all the recommended checks internally I was pretty sure it was outside anyway. They agreed to send someone to try and fix it without entering the property which they did. I had a card through my door basically saying they had disconnected a faulty lead outside the house and the line was not working. A few weeks later however, I received a bill for nearly £200 even though they had supposedly fixed the fault without entering my property. They did eventually refund this amount after lots of calls and aggrevation. However since then, the fault has been re-occuring, every so often the line goes dead for two or three days, sometimes loosing internet connection but not always. I have rang them again and they wont send anyone unless I agree again to these ridiculous charges. What can I do? Would an independent phone engineer be able to fix this - if such a thing exists!

ORE

agree to the charges if your sure its an outside problem and it will get sorted. Do you think a plumber would come and fix your central heating if you said you wouldnt pay them when they were done.

red

firstly, it is worth getting a refund for line disruption - depending on how bad the line has been, you may get a full or partial refund. we have had bt out loads of times and it can be very frustrating - their call centre in india do not help matters at all. try seeing if your neighbours are having problems and if u have done all the checks inside, u may have to accept the bt charge. if you do so, try to be there at the time so that you can see what is being done.