bt bill for a fault

stesilc

we had a intermitent fault on our bt broadband over a 8 week period they had me doing checks and tests they sent a engineer out in feb he found a bit of corosion in the junction box he replaced it and went, bt gave me a months free broadband. i was happy till today when i got a bill for £99 for a engineer home improvement service charge.:mad: i dont think this is right any thoughts thanks

cherie1122

We had a similar problem a couple of years ago and were not charged for the engineer's visit. In fact it was just the same as yours - corrosion in the junction box in the street.

Aren't BT supposed to keep the line to your house in good repair? It's what you pay for.

flashg67

I always thought/assumed that the line, up to where it enters your property, including the first socket box was the suppliers responsibility, so anything past that is your problem? Depends exactly where the problem was I suppose?
Have you told them it seems a conflict to get a month free, implying it was BT's issues, but then to issue a repair bill?

bod1467

Sometimes the engineers code their reports wrongly. (Whether by accident or on purpose I'll let you decide).

Raise it with your landline rental provider (I'm assuming BT) as an erroneous charge, advising them that work was effected EXTERNAL to your property and thus is non-chargeable.

But ... did the engineer make ANY changes to wiring inside your property? (A common scam is to replace your faceplate, whether it needs it or not, and call that "improvement" work).

System

my mum's just had a fault repaie free of charge, she was told as previously stated up to the 1st junction box indoors is their responsability after that the property owner foots the bill.

Frankie_doodle

I work with telecoms, I know that when we have a customer reporting faults, that before we can even report it, we have to get them to do a test at the test socket. In order to locate whether the fault is internal or external. This is because if Openreach go out and the fault is located internally the customer will get charged for any repairs. We also do line tests in the background to check if a fault is found and where the system says it is in order to pass it on to Openreach.

Openreach (BT) are responsible for the telephone line up to the test socket located in the NTE box (the NTE box is where you plug your phone/ router/ADSL filter in)

The test socket is located under the faceplate of the NTE box, so if you look at the front of it there are two screws which you can unscrew and GENTLY move the faceplate away, there is a test socket under the faceplate. anything from the outside up to that socket is Openreach's responsibility. After that socket it is the premises owners responsibility so if the junction box was located after the test socket then Openreach will charge.

Dave_C_2

Frankie_doodle wrote: »

I work with telecoms, I know that when we have a customer reporting faults, that before we can even report it, we have to get them to do a test at the test socket. In order to locate whether the fault is internal or external. This is because if Openreach go out and the fault is located internally the customer will get charged for any repairs. We also do line tests in the background to check if a fault is found and where the system says it is in order to pass it on to Openreach.

The trouble is that these tests by themselves cannot correctly identify where the problem is, especially when it's a noise problem.

Despite good line tests and no difference using test socket. The callouts from BT openreach have identified the following problems:

• Bad contacts on the main socket - corrosion on the Krone connectors on the BT side
• Bad contact between the street cabinet and our house
• Cap on the broadband speed for no apparent reason - "probably an intermittent fault" according to the Engineer

None of these were chargeable to me

Dave

stesilc

bt have cancelled the bill thankyou