BT Call out charge problem

papoosue

I have a problem with my BT bill.

In December when we had all that heavy snow, some of our guttering came down and so did the outside phone line. When I phoned BT about it, the lady on the phone checked the line and assured me I wouldn't be charged for getting it fixed. I've just got my BT bill and there is an engineer call out charge for £127 and they want to put my monthly payments up from £18.50 to £88!!

Obviously I will phone them in the morning, but does anyone know if this can be right, especially when I was assured I wouldn't be charged? I don't have any record of the call of course, but I suppose it might have been recorded by them.

DVardysShadow

As I understand it, BT [openreach] are responsible for everything up to the network termination point in your house. However, in this case, it appears that the line broke as a consequence of your guttering coming down. So you are responsible to BT for this damage. However, you would be responsible for the actual costs of putting it right, whether they are lower or higher than £127. Your choice as to whether to fight the amount, but you have no real choice over whether to pay for the damage.

brewerdave

Can you claim on house insurance?? (dependent on excess of course)

dogfish12

Hello Papoosue, I'm pretty sure that there is a record of this phone call and its contents. Fight it! People don't seem to realise that any charges go onto your next quarterly bill. No bill comes immediately through the post and you never know what the price is going to be. On 2 occasions they've tried to charge me and both times I rejected it. On the second occasion I cancelled the engineer because I fixed the fault myself. The following day he turned up and suggested that I might well be charged the flat fee of over £100 whether he enters the property or not. I rang customer complaints and gave them the exact time that I made the cancellation phone call. You might be able to use that one yourself. Because after all, if you knew that you would be charged you might well have rejected an engineers visit rather to use a local telephone engineer of some sort. You have been given incorrect info. Perhaps that is the line that you need to take.

papoosue

Thanks guys for the advice and information. I phoned BT this morning and the first person I got said that they 'hadn't decided if they were going to charge for these bad weather repairs' and that someone would get back to me within 10 days. I was a bit dumfounded at this response so I didn't really have a reply. After I got off the phone I had a think, phoned them back and asked for more info - they said that I would definitely be charged as it was my guttering falling that caused the line to break etc. This is fair enough I suppose although perhaps I could argue that it was the snow's fault for making my guttering fall in the first place lol. Anyway, she also said they had to do something with the 'box' in the house and that the engineer had told my partner on two occasions that we would be charged for this repair. I was not in the house when the repair happened but my partner did say that the engineer said he thought we'd be charged. Of course I said to my partner that couldn't be correct because initially I had been told we wouldn't be charged. They had it all documented and in the end I just paid. The reason I paid (and I had to use the money I got two days ago for my birthday so I wasn't happy at all) was because I basically just thought I had to.

To be honest, I think the part about the guttering causing the wire to break is fair enough and we should probably have paid for that (I have no idea of BTs policy on damage caused by bad weather). The only thing that rankles a bit, is that I don't know why they replaced the box thingy inside the house. It was nowhere near the broken piece of cable, which was hanging outside the house so I don't see why it would need to be replaced/fixed. Also, the original box was situated below a window, was small and discreet, and for some reason I now have a box which has the bit for your phone to plug into (the original was just a little box, no socket) halfway up my stairs and placed just above the skirting! It looks ridiculous - why would you want to plug your phone in half way up the stairs? At the time I was just so pleased to be reconnected that I didn't really make much of it.

I wish I had been there when the engineer was now, because I would have queried everything and perhaps I wouldn't have had to pay all that money out. I also didn't think I had been charged because I would have expected a separate bill, not for it to come on my quarterly bill.

I don't know if I should have done anything differently - it may all have been quite fair, but I have a gut instinct that the box thingy maybe wasn't really needed.

Phew, sorry for the rant. It was kind for you all to reply (oh and no, I didn't get it under my house insurance - long story...).