BT OPENREACH Charges

DLA72

I moved in September, I was told by BT that everything was ok to transfer over. A month later my broadband was connected but there was a fault on my line. BT Openreach were dispatched and when they eventually turned up all they did was pull out a plug that I was told to connect. I was charged £127.99 for less than 10mins work.
Is this fair? I'm still refusing to pay and have been in dispute since December. BT tell me that openreach are not part of BT and cannot remove the charge... That's not what it says on the vans I see every day.
My bill is now over £300 and nobody can advise me. Otelo have been notified and are looking into it, but they don't answer my emails.
Can anyone help?

beecher2

When you book an engineer visit it is spelled out to you that if the problem's at your end, you'll have to pay for the visit. You don't say what the plug was that they pulled out, but I assume that the problem was caused by your set up and I'm afraid that means you're liable to pay.

Why is the bill now £300? You need to come to an agreement about paying the outstanding bill I'm afraid.

spike7451

BT are now split up into four companies;

BT Retail
BT sorry I can't remember the name
BT Wholesale (who look after the network infrastructure)
BT Openreach (who look after the lines from the exchange to the home)

Unfortunatly,as you state you had something plugged in that shouldn't have been,the charge will stand.

Do I have to pay for a fault repair?

We can repair many line faults at the exchange or on the network. Others require a visit by a BT engineer. There is no charge for these repairs. We will only charge you when one of our engineers visits your property and finds that the fault could have been fixed by you. For example, if your phone is broken or has been left unplugged.

https://www2.bt.com/static/i/microsite/help_and_tips/faults/faq/faults_faq2.html

When I was a service engineer for NTL,I once leveled a charge for £50 to a woman who reported a fault with her cable service,she had bad pictures on the TV.All I did to fix it was to turn the VCR on at the mains plug.The way I look at is like this.Say you call in a fault like the woman above,A service tech wastes time on a fault that the customer could easily have fixed herself,meanwhile a little old lady has to wait for an open fault slot for her non working phone to be fixed because of a non fault with the TV.

Gordon_Hose

Doesn't matter how long they were in your property, it's a flat charge.

I'd get the bill paid before they cut you off and pass the account to a DCA.

Ciske

BT Retail can have the charge investigated on your behalf, seeing you cannot complain directly to Openreach. You are a customer with BT Retail, Openreach is their supplier, so BT Retail need to take ownership of your complaint.

If they have already done so and found the charge to be correct then yes, you pay. It's a flat call-out charge so they will check whether the reason for charging was correct, not how long the engineer was there.

macman

If the fault was anywhere but on the incoming line or at your master socket, then it's chargeable at the £130 minimum call out fee. What attempts did you make to contact BT CS and remedy the fault yourself before asking for an engineer appointment?

BT_company_representative

Hi DLA72

I have just seen you post and would like to look into the fault charge that has been raised on your account. If you would like me to look into this please check out my profile section where you will find my contact details and if you fill out the form I will gladly look into this for you.

Regards David