Home phone out of action - why?

Poppy9

Lineman

Thanks for the response. It took 5 years of complaining last time before they sent out an engineer. I knew as soon as he opened his mouth he wasn't going to be any help. First thing he said "when I locate the problem with your equipment you will be charged". I didn't take the bait but just said lets wait and see what the problem is. He tested all my phones, by then I had quite a collection :rolleyes: and they were all fine - as I knew they would be. He tested the main socket, again no problem. He was looking quite agitated by now and then he spotted an extension from the main socket. This extension had originally been installed by BT and ran under the hallway and dining room carpet. He wanted to rip my carpets up but I refused. Anyway he couldn't find a problem with that socket. When I asked what happens now that they had confirmed there was no fault in my house he just shrugged and said someone would get back to me. Thats when I rang the fault line again to see where we went from here and they told me about the known fault at the exchange. Another engineer then rang me and said that they had sorted it out, something to do with us being the lead(?) number at the exchange. We have been problem free since, even the annoying pinging has stopped. You can understand my frustration at them telling me now I have a new fault that its in my home again:eek: .

My line is now working for out going calls but has a funny rythmic sound. Incoming calls still routed to my mobile.

bbb_uk

Poppy9 wrote:

...even the annoying pinging has stopped....

What do you mean by pinging? We get every now and then a short ping that sounds exactly like we had just put the phone down, or someone was about to ring us but it doesn't actually ring though!

lineman_2

You say that the calls are still diverted to your mobile. Does the dial tone on your home line sound like it is going up and down every second or so?
If yes then this is put on to show that the line is either diverted or if you use Bt 1571 then there is a message waiting for you.
To remove the divert lift the handset and dial #21# . You should hear a message saying call diversion is cancelled. If you hang up and listen again the dial tone should sound normal.
Hope this helps

Lineman

Poppy9

Thanks for this but BT complaints just rung me and told me the same thing re the noise but it was very crackly too. My OH doesn't feel we are getting the full story though. The line is now working fine but they say they haven't done anything even though the lady did go off and speak to an engineer. They then asked us to plug each phone directly into the unscrewed socket and they all worked fine. They then told us to plug our filters into the socket 1 by 1 and they would test again. One of the filters would not let them ring in but we could ring out.

When my OH asked why on Sunday when we unplugged everything including filters the phone wasn't working she just said that it was down to another fault which they hadn't identified. My OH has now tried calling our home line himself with the dodgy filter attached and its working fine - he thinks she conned him by pretending one filter was dodgy:rolleyes: - and really they have plugged us back in at the exchange - he's mad

I am just happy we are working again and I don't have to wait in for an engineer to come out.

Poppy9

bbb_uk wrote:

What do you mean by pinging? We get every now and then a short ping that sounds exactly like we had just put the phone down, or someone was about to ring us but it doesn't actually ring though!

Yep thats the noise, very annoying especially in the middle of the night. BT even sent us a tinkle muffler as they acknowledge it occurs on some lines when they are automatically testing the line!! Didn't stop the problem though until the fixed whatever fault we had.

Now we only get ring back if you dial out while on line and then end the call.

bbb_uk

Poppy9,

Thanks for that. Just rung BT over our problem with this and he explained it to me that it was the automatic testing of the line (like you said). He is going to send out those muffler things you mentioned. I hope it works for us.

Lineman, could I ask your your advice on whether the pinging sound (apparently due to our voltage on the phone being high) cause more intereference on our cordless digital phones?

When we were on t'west, we had no problems with quality of calls on the DECT phones (they are actually BT ones as well) but since moving to BT the quality has been known to be worse but yet the normal phone sounds ok. To be honest, I've been getting stick over this because it was me that persuaded us to move from t'west to BT.

Many thanks.