BT engineer charge

amacg

I live in a house built in 1940's. BT wiring was original cloth like and as such don't have a master socket at entry point. I had to call out BT as had been having difficulty receiving incoming calls. I was advised no charge for visit as seemed wear and tear issue but found charged for work when bill arrived. The engineer replaced two BT boxes (small rectangular boxes) in my hallway and also the wire which connects boxes to each other. They were not sockets. Both BT sockets (bedroom and livingroom) and wires which connect to the box in hallway remained untouched except reconnecting. My thoughts are that these are property of BT and not myself. Can anyone shed any light?

Browntoa

the last BT point is the main Bt socket, the one that is connected where the wire comes into the house

everything else is deemed the customers

was yours the new style BT wall socket ??

BritBrat

Sounds like he replaced your equipment but being old it may have been theirs once.

Difficult one this, did you give any permision for him to do work on your equipment?

Silly question really but unless you did he had no right to touch it.

Well that would be my argument when I rang up to complain in the hope of getting the charge removed.

Good luck.

EDIT

was yours the new style BT wall socket ??

My guess is it's more like this one:

Browntoa

I'm with britbat

in the old days it would have been installed by Bt(GPO) not anyone else , but i'm not sure how the rules stand on their old wiring ??

amacg

The BT boxes replaced were not sockets ie no phones can plug into them...they are small rectangular boxes. The 1st box is connected to the 2nd box which in turn is wired to actual sockets as shown in picture. I called up faults line and was told repair would be free so I agreed to visit under this premise.