BT Dispute

mr_shinobi`

Hi

New to this forum, but pleased to see something like this exists! Looks like there are a lot of problems/issues with BT, so sorry to add to them, but any advice would be appreciated. As usual, it's a lengthy one, but to get to the point:

1) I had a perfectly working phone line, which stopped working one day.
2) BT acknowledged that this was an external problem, and after a week, they fixed the external problem. However, my phone still did not work.
3) After going through all their advice on the phone, I (stupidly) agreed that there was no alternative than to send an engineer out to investigate.
4) An engineer came, and opened the 'BT Master Socket'. he spent five minutes working on it, and said that an extension cable had been fitted, which was not allowed.
5) A bill for £211 came through the post.

My questions:

1) In this case, BT undertaking works outside of my property stopped my phone from working. I appreciate that (the previous owner) had fitted some sort of extension wiring to the BT Master socket - but it worked. That may well be disallowed, but I can't believe it was the cause of the problem. Is there anyone with technical knowledge that can explain why my phone would have stopped working BECAUSE of the extension?

2) I understand that the BT Master Socket is "BT's property" and that you can't open it up. If there was a fault caused by the previous owner messing around with it, then surely BT should be chasing the previous owner - I didn't damage their property! Anyone got any experience arguing this case?

BT are being massively unhelpful and quite threatening. A £211 charge for five minutes work is utterly ridiculous - I wouldn't mind paying a more fair amount....

Thanks

Bustage

Simple answer - When you bought the house, you bought the wiring.

Did the second engineer do any external work? or was it simply work in the NTE5 socket then the line was working again?

Heinz

It sounds like the previous owner had incorrectly fitted an extension cable from the master socket and that was causing the problem (fitting wiring for extensions is allowed but there is a specific way of doing that) and it was necessary for the engineer to remove that to resolve the problem.

Unfortunatelty, the cause of the problem was your internal wiring and, hence, you are liable for the BT bill.