Home phone out of action - why?

Poppy9

I have a BT line in my house. Yesterday in the middle of a telephone conversation with my sister my phone went dead. Tried to ring her back but I had no dialling tone. Tried ringing her with my mobile but her line was engaged. She tried ringing me with her mobile and my line was engaged too. Rang someone else on my mobile and asked them to report a fault on both our lines to BT. Within minutes my sisters phone was working again but mine wasn't. They've diverted incoming calls to my mobile and sent me a text telling me to monitor the fault on line. Now this is what I don't understand. How am I able to get on line. My broadband seems to be working ok. The on line fault report says the problem is probably in my home and I have to wait until 13th June for an engineer to visit.

9 years ago I had problems with my phone line and for 5 years BT kept telling me there was no fault at the exchange it was in my house with my phones. The fault was intermittant in that the phone would ring to the caller but not in the house. Sometimes the line would go dead too so you couldn't ring out. After 5 years of this and a visit from a cocky engineer who could find nothing wrong in my home (though from his opening line he thought he would) I rang BT again to ask them what they were going to do about the fault that they couldn't find. Casually the operator told me that there was a known fault at the exchange. I was blooming furious as she implied it was a long standing fault. I rang OFTEL who had some senior chap ring me on a Saturday morning to apologise and offer me 2 years free line rental or a cheque for the equivalent amount. I took the money.

Now they are telling me I have a fault in my home again I don't believe them. Problem is my phone is completely dead - it came back to life with a ping yesterday for about 1 hour. Is the fact that my broadband working an indication of some other type of fault. Any advice on how to tackle this problem.

Cost wise BT have suspended my line rental and will give me an allowance of £1 per day for mobile phone costs. I would have liked more cash but we have 2 mobiles with 400 free mins between them so no problem apart from ringing non mobile or landline numbers.

Heinz

Your broadband is (obviously) carried on the same pair of wires as your landline. It is possible (although BT deny this so that they can continue to charge for a landline as well as broadband even if a customer only wants the latter) for the pair to just carry broadband in exactly the same way as it is possible for it to just carry a telephone landline.

The fact that your broadband is working suggests (to me, a mere layman) that the pair of wires from the exchange is intact and that you either have a faulty telephone (I assume you've considered that option and have tried another instrument) or the fault is, as you suspect, at the exchange. You've received BT's standard reply though and, as you've found in the past, they don't budge easily.

Poppy9

Thanks for the reply but perhaps I should clarify that my Broadband is with AOL not BT but obviously I have to use the BT line.

I unplugged all the phones after BT instruction and they tested the line and said there was a fault. I tried plugging just one phone into socket but its dead as a dodo.

I am just wondering whether I should speak to OFTEL again as they sorted me out last time within a day. I wish I could remember the chaps name from BT as he told me to go back to him if ever I had any problems.

heatherw_01

Over the past 3 years I have had terrible problems with BT. My line would cut off, I would get interference, my broadband would drop. They kept saying the problem was on my property and kept sending engineers out who found no faults!

The problem was intermittent and often engineers that went up the pole made it worse!

I knew that the fault was not on my property but they would not listen.

After 3 years a different engineer swapped me over at the exchange and no problems since! Everytime I see a engineer up the pole I get worried!

I hope you get it fixed as BT are useless when it comes to faults.

santana-mx3

Over the years I have had several instances of a line going dead or crackly to the point when it could not be used. On most occasions, when I reported the fault, BT would not accept that there was a fault with their equipment or connections and instead blamed my equipment or extension wiring and said I would have to pay to have an engineer come out to me. Fortunately, I have always been able to shoot this argument down because I have two lines at home (two pairs within one cable) and both have never gone faulty at the same time. I have always been able to swap my equipment/extension wiring over between the lines using the lower half of the BT Linebox. I have also always connected a known working phone from the good line into the test socket of the bad line. On each occasion when I have pointed this out to BT, the person at the other end of the phone has gone quiet and then admitted that the problem is at their end and that they will send an engineer out at no cost to me.

It usually turned out to be loose wires in the box up the pole. One problem was a faulty card at the exchange (my two lines were not connected to the same equipment at the exchange).

The point I'm making is that the stock BT response when the fault is not obvious to them seems to be "there's nothing wrong at our end, your equipment must be at fault and if you want us to send an engineer out, you'll have to pay" until you are able to prove them wrong. This is extrmely annoying and they probably get away with it with customers who don't argue with them or who don't have two lines or a phone they know is 100% working on someone else's line which they can plug into the test socket.

Poppy9

I decided I am not been messed about like the last time so I have emailed BT CEO. [email="ben.verwaayen@bt.com"]ben.verwaayen@bt.com[/email]

Edited to say: Wow I have just had a reply from Mr V to say he asked High Level Complaints to investigate. Lets hope they are as quick in replying.

jake_bullet_2

As you are aware the telephone signal is carried on a pair of wires, broadband will in fact work at almost full capacity if just one of those wires is intact, sounds like this is the case.

BT have to charge you for line rental, how else do you imagine they cover the cost of the engineers? someone has to pay to maintain the network.

Now more than ever they have to charge, they can't subsidise the cost of maintaining the copper network with the profit made from calls since you can pay for all of them via tesco etc, equally the money paid for broadband goes to the isp, who pay BT a wholesale price for the use of the exchange equipment, fibre network, bandwidth costs etc NOT the local network.

dag_2

Now more than ever they have to charge, they can't subsidise the cost of maintaining the copper network with the profit made from calls since you can pay for all of them via tesco etc, equally the money paid for broadband goes to the isp, who pay BT a wholesale price for the use of the exchange equipment, fibre network, bandwidth costs etc NOT the local network.

Yeah, but that's BT's problem, not ours. If we pay the agreed tariff for a phone line - then that's what we should get.

It's always good to be able to test your own equipment. If you unplug everything except one phone, and it still doesn't work - and if you then unplug that phone next door and try it on your neighbour's line - and it works on their line but not yours - then it's obviously a fault with BT's equipment.

Poppy9

dag wrote:

It's always good to be able to test your own equipment. If you unplug everything except one phone, and it still doesn't work - and if you then unplug that phone next door and try it on your neighbour's line - and it works on their line but not yours - then it's obviously a fault with BT's equipment.

Thats what we did for 5 years last time we had a fault. BT wouldn't believe us that we had working phones though until an Engineer came out and saw for himself that there was nothing wrong with our equipment. BT told me last time to unscrew the socket and plug a working phone directly to the bare connection. If it still doesn't work that indicates an outside fault.

I have now had a phonecall from the Chairman of BT PA to apologise and to say the matter is being looked into. I mentioned in my email that the £1 daily allowance for calls on my mobile wouldn't cover 5 minutes on hold to BT as mobile operators charge for 0800 numbers. They have now given me an ordinary landline number. I don't object to paying line rental when I have a working service. I do object when its not working though and they try to fob me off.

Lastly just 2 mins ago my home phone rung after being dead all day. I picked it up and I have a dialling tone and I have made a phone call. Line quite crackily though.

DonnyDave

Poppy9 wrote:

Lastly just 2 mins ago my home phone rung after being dead all day. I picked it up and I have a dialling tone and I have made a phone call. Line quite crackily though.

Sounds like a dodgy connection somewhere along the line. Had the same problem after a pole had been changed to raise the dropwires by a couple of inches. I'm not really sure where the problem was, but I had several engineers come out, each time changing different bits of the line between property and exchange.

The ringing current will be enough jolt any dodgy connections. Do you find the crackling changes with the wind?

Try the quiet line test, dial 17070 select option 2. Press secrecy so you can't hear yourself.

lineman_2

Bravery pill swallowed,
Re the earlier messages regarding long term problems. I am an engineer for Bt and can fully understand how frustrating it can be when there is a long term problem with your phone line.
The test system that bt uses is one of the best that there is but there is one fault that it cannot detect. This is known as an hr fault and shows itself as a crackly line. The only way to locate the fault is for an engineer to physically examine the line.
When you think that a line length of 5 plus Km is not uncommon then you can imagine how hard it is to locate the said fault.
Bt are investing in new test equipment and procedures to try to overcome the problems of the past but that is of little solace if your line is out of order.
Please don't take it out on the engineer when they come to repair the line as they will only have been given the fault earlier that day and will not have known until then about your problem.
The emphasis in Bt regarding faults has changed in the last couple of years. We are now encouraged to take ownership of the fault so that the customer has one point of contact. This even goes so far as to give our mobile contact numbers to the customer.
Someone earlier mentioned that broadband works on one wire. This is correct and actually makes it easier for the engineer to locate the fault.
Hope this helps.

Lineman