Large bill from Bt

doelani

Our phone stopped working last week and rang BT fault line, was automated service and after a few minutes waiting a message came back saying there was a fault with the line.

Next morning at 8am a a call form BT to say they were working on line and then 10 minutes later an engineer at the door, checked in house and said fault was not with line but was inside house. We had disconnected everything night before and line was still not working so we thought the " line fault" the automatic service told us was correct. After the engineer left we discovered it was a fault with an extension and got it sorted and today got out bill from BT for this month and was £108 + Vat. for the call out.

So angry at ourselves as we believed BT when they said it was a line fault and no warning when we got this message that it may not be correct. We rang BT the afternoon after engineer called and was told that there would be no charge as it was showing as a exchange fault. I guess it had just not been update.

Just what we needed in December.

macman

What you should have done is tested the line from the BT test socket behind the faceplate on the master socket (NTE5). That would presumably have worked OK and showed that the fault was on your side of the network. Anything downstream of the NTE5 is your responsibility and BT will charge to fix it.

doelani

macman wrote: »

What you should have done is tested the line from the BT test socket behind the faceplate on the master socket (NTE5). That would presumably have worked OK and showed that the fault was on your side of the network. Anything downstream of the NTE5 is your responsibility and BT will charge to fix it.

Unfortunetly most people I would think would not know about master sockets etc I would not alhtough I do now.

Oh well we all live and learn

macman

If you had reported the fault 'live' then BT should have taken you through this test before sending out Openreach.

doelani

macman wrote: »

If you had reported the fault 'live' then BT should have taken you through this test before sending out Openreach.

When I rang got an automated service, have never had to report a fault before so thought this was how it was done, Thanks anyway will know next time

brewerdave

macman, don't forget a lot of people haven't got these relatively new 2 piece "master" sockets. My system which was installed new by BT in 1986 has 3 extensions wired from a junction box on an external wall, so I, for one, would not be able to eliminate internal wiring from the equation if I ever have a fault.

macman

brewerdave wrote: »

macman, don't forget a lot of people haven't got these relatively new 2 piece "master" sockets. My system which was installed new by BT in 1986 has 3 extensions wired from a junction box on an external wall, so I, for one, would not be able to eliminate internal wiring from the equation if I ever have a fault.

True, though I believe there are NTE5's on more than half the installed lines in the UK-they were introduced back in 1981. Even if you haven't got one, many people will have a chain extension (or extensions) set up, rather than your star and hub version, so it's still possible to test from the first socket on the network. In your case, you could isolate each extension in turn from the JB if you had to.