Fault on BT Line

skea56

Hi everyone

We have had a fault on our line since Friday. Started off as slight interference/crackle on the line which I put down to an old handset but then on Friday we lost our broadband connection.

Have checked and rechecked all wiring, and have tried plugging phone line directly into socket (thereby bypassing broadband filters etc), however, the crackling has now got worse, so much so it is impossible to make or receive a phonecall.

We are with Talk Talk for our calls, but the line was originally BT.

My question is who would I contact to report the fault, Talk Talk or BT, and secondly, should I expect a large engineer's bill for repair.:(

Many thanks

sk56

notbritishgas

Who do you pay your line rental to? It is them who you report the fault to.

As for charges, if you have eliminated your own wiring and equipment there should be no charge (although there have been cases reported on here when BT Openreach have charged when they should not have done).
Have you plugged into the test socket behind the faceplate of the NTE and also tried a different phone.

skea56

Thanks for the reply - I'll need to check but I'm nearly sure its BT. I'm bringing home a phone from work today to test - will also check out that test socket - wasn't aware there was one!

sk56

skea56

After 2 phonecalls of over 20 mins on hold (on my mobile I might add since the phone line is unuseable!!) I thought I'd got sorted with Talk Talk - spoke to Sarah who said there was a fault on the line and it would be sorted within 24 hours...that was Wednesday evening.

Last night the line was still as bad as ever, and another 20 min phonecall, asked that we give them a further 24 hours to fix it as they have passed it onto BT and have had no further update from the latter.

We now have been without broadband and a useable phoneline for a week...:mad::mad: no doubt another call from my mobile will be needed this evening.

On a side note does anyone know how much it costs to phone an 0870 number from a mobile? I'm dreading my mobile bill next month :eek::eek:


sk56

macman

But you said you thought your line rental was with BT? If so you need to report the fault to BT-not to your broadband or calls provider.
BT Openreach deal with the line maintenance regardless, but if your line rental is with BT then the fault must be reported to BT Retail, who then contact BT OR-they're entirely separate.
TT/BT should give you a credit for the downtime.

skea56

macman wrote: »

But you said you thought your line rental was with BT? If so you need to report the fault to BT-not to your broadband or calls provider.
BT Openreach deal with the line maintenance regardless, but if your line rental is with BT then the fault must be reported to BT Retail, who then contact BT OR-they're entirely separate.
TT/BT should give you a credit for the downtime.

Yes sorry my mistake - when I checked the phone bills at home from TT I realised we were paying line rental to them and not BT.

sk56

Mark_In_Hampshire

You need to pursue it with Talk Talk, and importantly, you need to refuse something called a "Qube engineer" if it is offered because you have already done the in-home tests. If and when an Openreach engineer finally turns up, disconnect everything, hide your handsets, and just leave the master socket for him or her to attend to.

All providers have to use BT Openreach to maintain the lines, so there's not a lot that can be done except wait, shout and shout again.

skea56

Just a little update - finally got TT to send out an engineer on Monday. Turned out the problem was caused by an outside phone line being damaged after being blown in the wind.
Phoneline back in pristine condition....although I think my broadband is now very slow...queue another set of phonecalls to PlusNet now lol!!

sk56