Grrrr talk talk.

kings981

I know you pay peanut you get monkeys.

We had a fault on our phone line back in March - it was compleletely dead, tested all the phones our end. It still wouldn't work. Notified Talktalk of the problem. BT engineer comes out after about a week, looks at the lines and takes the cover off the box, says it could be corrosion or damp in the box, squirted in a bit of WD40 (or similar) cleaned it up, in the house less than 10 minutes. He never mentioned he would charge for that, although I suppose because he's BT he doesn't have to. 3 months later I get a bill for £100. I know they say there could be charges if your at fault, but I always assumed 'wrongly' you were liable for everything after the box. Bit annoying really when we were in our old house, with BT they changed a box no problems - no charge.

What really bugs me is as my 18 month contract has recently ended with Talktalk I had them calling me all hours of the day to renew with them, eventually they offered me half price for three months, and to be locked in for only 12 months. Funny that two weeks later the engineer charge then appears on the bill. If I had realised before that I had been charged for the engineer coming out I would have thought twice about renewing the contract. The lady on the phone now imforms me their engineer charge has gone up by 30%!!!!!!!!!

To be honest up til now although Talktalk's service was always lousy I thought well its cheap. I had several problems when I moved house, and with the setting up the Broadband there were a few teething problems and their IT people were useless after waiting for 2 hours on the phone, to sort it out. I worked it out myself eventually.

As soon as I can squirm out of the contract I will be taking my business elsewhere, and reading the small print.

TalkTalk

Hi kings981,

if you feel you have been charged without cause there is nothing to stop you appealing it. The worst that can happen is that it won't get refunded.

Ady

spike7451

Kings981..

BT's OWN website states;

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


THerfore,if the fault is from the back plate of the NTE5 Master socket back towards the exchange,then the repair isn't chargable to you unless you've,say,cut an overhead drop cable with tree cutters.
I suspect that this is,in my experience,Talk Talk trying to bluff the charge onto you so they aren't out of pocket.I have seen that ploy soooo many times.

skid112

had the same fault, talk talk tried to pass on a charge but the BT engineer had already said it was not chargeable

kings981

Mmm interesting. Thanks for all the replies. Perhaps I will persue it.

To be honest though as it was three months ago, I had forgotten all about it. Wish I had made notes at the time of exactly what the BT man said!! Another lesson learnt.

I'll let you know how I get on.

spike7451

Kings,does the phone socket look like any of these;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/images/iplate/bt-master-socket-size-large.jpg

The is a version of the one on the left that is the same size as the one on the right.

Anyhow,if it's the one on the right,the bottom faceplate is removeable & the is a test socket behind that plate.Anything after the plate is the customers problem,anything before,including the wiring & socket,is BT's unless as I previously stated.It's Talk Talk trying it one with you,take it from someone who's been in the Telecomms trade since the late 90's,I've seen this many times before.

macman

Damp or corrosion in the NTE5 will always be chargeable, as they will say that the customer has failed to maintain the structure of the house in such as way that damp has got in. In other words, it's user-inflicted damage, which is chargeable even on the BT side of the NTE5.

kings981

Thanks macman, I was afraid that would be the case. It's infuriating as we haven't been in the house that long and have inherited the problem.

£100 seems an awful lot of money to fix a small problem.

macman

£130 is the normal minimum Openreach call out charge, so it could have been worse.

TalkTalk

Hi All,

just to let you know a BT OR engineer is not in a position to confirm or deny charges for his/her work. They simply carry out the required tasks BT charges are raised to us by unsurprisingly BT, we then pass them on. However, as I mentioned earlier you should challenge them if you feel they are incorrect the worst that can happen is that you still get charged.

Ady