Engineer callout fee dispute

May I ask whom I speak to* regarding an engineer call out fee I have have recently been billed for. I realise this is a common question on this board, so I will not bore you with the details. I'll just add that it was unjustified and that at no point during my logging of the fault, was it explained that there would be a charge.
* phone number or link to BT care team.
Regards
Marc

did you try the online help
live chat http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact/c/2902/?s_intcid=con_intban_sanda_contact_us_chat_from_forums
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Similar Messages

Another 'Engineer' callout charge

Hi,
Could someone please advise. I have been billed for an 'Engineer' callout to fix my intermittent BT Broadband fault. After numerous lengthy and frustrating telephone conversations with BT fault line I finally agreed for a technician to visit my premises.
This visit occurred in January when I was at work, my wife was here to grant access to the BT technician. While he was here he couldn't find a fault, so as a matter of course he replaced my Master socket - which didn't need replacing, and replaced my BT homehub - which didn't need replacing.
The fault was worse than ever with the new equipment, but I was advised to wait 10 days for the new homehub to settle down. After the initial bedding in period my speed was the same, but the internet kept dropping out intermittently.
The fault wasn't fixed, but I found it was more bearable to live with hub resets than it was to sit for an hour on the phone to a call centre reprentative reading off a script, asking the same mundane questions, but getting nowhere. This decision has turned out to be detrimental to my disute.
During the visit the technician never mentioned that I'd be charged (or got my wife to sign anything for a charge) I thought I'd be fine without getting charged for the service. How wrong I was. BT have taken the £99 charge from my account.
Needless to say I rang customer services to dispute the charge and was told that the charge will stand. The cutomer services rep said that I would be charged because the BT technician had 'removed internal phone wiring' a fact which I dispute, this can be proved if someone listened to any of my previous phone calls to the fault help line where I explained that I had removed all extensions in the house and even had my home hub connected directly into the test socket, as this was the way to get the best signal strength on the line.
I also explained that the fault hadn't been rectified and I was still experiencing an intermittent fault, the rep explained that becaue I hadn't reported a fault since the visit then he says that the fault must have been fixed. I then explained that I had screenshots to use as evidence to show the fault hadn't been fixed. These screenshots covered eight different days throughout the last three months and showed the poor noise margin on my homehub aswell as the rest of the line stats
The rep on the phone was adamant that the charge still stands regardless of the fact that the technician lied about the work he carried out and that the fault still remains on the line.
Please see this quote from the BT website
You'll have to pay £99 for a visit if our engineer finds that the problem is with:
Your main socket, due to damage you've caused
Your home wiring beyond the main socket (for example, your phone extensions). This includes damage you've caused
The way you've connected up your equipment
Interference from something else in your home, like your phone, alarm system, microfilter, BT Home Hub or broadband router
The fault is with the BT Home Hub and it's not in warranty (Hub remains in warranty if you are in a long-term contract)
I can't find any justification for this charge on this list. Please advise my best course of action to get my £99 back.

Here's an update to my situation for those interested. I feel that it is only fair that I write this response, because I was quick enough to insult BT when I was unhappy, so I should reciprocate that with praise when I'm happy.
As imjolly rightly pointed out the response from BT that I posted earlier was not the response from the BT forum mods.
I was contacted by a forum mod a day or two later.
After a few minutes on the phone to the forum mod I had a warm fuzzy feeling that BT could actually do customer services right. Actually I felt a little embarrassed about the attitude of my previous post. If only the original customer services rep was so understanding I wouldn't have been so frustrated.
I have now had my £99 engineers charge refunded to my account, and someone is actually looking into getting my fault resolved.
I have been a customer with BT for a few years and always been reluctant to ring the customer service team because I have always found it to be a drawn-out and painful experience, however my experience with the forum mods here have turned around my whole opinion of BT and their ability to listen to their customers.
On the back of one phone call and a few follow up emails I am now certain that I will get BT installed in my new house I move into, something which I was 100% against (see previous post) before receiving this level of customer service. So another 18 month contract (minimum) can be attributed to the forum mod.

Re: BT Callout Fee

No, what is it/where can it be found? Was told that I would not be charged for an engineers visits. The fault was shown to be between the house and exchange after many outages at the exchange. Of course BT are now trying to bill me.

Welcome to this forum. This is a BT domestic customer to customer help forum, any messages posted here do not go to BT.
If you need to contact BT, you can use Live Chat or Contact BT ,or telephone 0800 800 150
If you cannot resolve your callout fee problem then
If you would like to contact one of the UK based BT Care Team who moderate this forum, they should be able to help you.
They can be contacted using this link BT Care Team
They normally respond by phone or e-mail, within three working days, however you should get an immediate confirmation, with a tracking number.
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.

Billed for engineer callout??

Hi there everyone!! I was wondering if anyone could help me with being billed for an engineer callout that i'd cancelled and wasn't even needed. A little bit of history: a few weeks ago my phone developed a crossed line with next door. Basically incoming calls to us got through to them and vice versa, internet went down and we couldn't makle outgoing calls. We naturaly rang BT to see what could be done. BT got us to do some tests on our line and eventually decided to send an engineer around to next door to see if they could fix it, if they couldn't they were to send an engineer around to us to see if they could fix it form there. Luckily they managed to fix the problem next door so I rang them up to cancel the engineer's visit. However two days before the previously cancelled apointment was due an engineer turned up to fix the already resolved problem. My son was the only one in and duely told him that the problem was fixed and he was not needed. He disappeared and now at the end of the month we have been billed for the callout and some of next door's phonecalls. I have made several complaining calls to BT but I have just been led in circles, now i've recieved an overdue bill message!! This can't be right can anyone help?!

As this can get very messy I would Contact Mods they work for BT and can be very helpful
[email protected]
include a link to this topic account number and phone number
If any post helps tick the star box on the left
Just cause Im paranoid dont mean they are not out to get me

Engineer callout dispute

Hi,
I've just had a very frustrating call with the BT support people over a £99 charge I've just had on my bill. Here's the background:
- had BT Infinity at old property and no issues
- moved into new property July 2012 and moved Infinity with me
- a lot going on with house move with 3 kids/half term so never checked download speed after "settling in" period
- father passed away December 2012 after a few months of being diagnosed with leukemia in August
- January 2013 started working from home more regularly
- March 2013 friend queried why my broadband was so slow (5mb download speed)
- called BT and explained that although broadband was working, it was very slow
- BT ran through all usual checks with me to no avail so arranged for engineer visit
- engineer came and explained that Broadband wiring had not been done correctly by original contractors in July (in fact he went as far as saying it was a complete botch job) and after he'd corrected it, Broadband went up to expected 45MB download speed
- £99 charge on bill as fault was due to "star wiring" in property that had to be replaced
Am I being unreasonable to dispute this charge? The initial person I spoke to said she had made her decision to uphold the charge, but that she would refer to a different department who dealt with disputes and they would be calling me back within 4 hours.
Any feedback appreciated!!!
Cheers
Stu
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi
I am sorry to see you are having problems
I suggest you contact the forum mods they should be able to get this problem sorted for you this is a link to them http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4951
They normally reply by email or phone directly to you within 3 working days they will take personal ownership of your problem until resolved and will keep you informed of progress
They are a UK based BT specialist team who have a good record at getting problems solved
This is a customer to customer self help forum the only BT presence here are the forum moderators
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Charged for engineer callout - Master socket

About a month or so ago I was having a problem with the phone line where the broadband was working fine but the phone line kept making a crackly noise...which got louder and more frequent until eventually after a few days you just couldn't hear anything on the phone so it became impossible to take a phone call.
We tried disconnecting everything else from the master socket and couldn't figure out what the problem was so gave customer support a call who ran through every check they could and couldn't find anything wrong. Customer service suggested there may be something wrong with the equipment within the premises and that if there was an engineer sent out and they found the problem to be with our equipment then we would be liable for it and be charged for the callout. I was happy to have an engineer visit because i was sure that it wasn't anything that we had plugged in.
So the engineer turns up and straight away determines that the master socket is at fault so I asked him if we would be charged for it and he assured me we wouldn't...after all its not our equipment.
I've just now gone to check my account and I'm absolutely shocked to stumble upon a £129.99 charge for an engineer and i simply dont understand why I can be charged for equipment that BT/Openreach has installed..its not my equipment...how can it be may fault...we havent damaged it and we have no damp etc!!!!
Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this....has this happened to anyone else?
Thanks!
Athique

Hi Athiqueahmed,
Thanks for the post and welcome to the forum. I appreciate this charge was certainly a nasty shock. I would be happy to look into why you have been charged for this visit. I will be able to view the engineers report and we can take it from there.
Can you please drop me an email? Click on my username (SeanD) and you will find my contact link under the 'About me' section of my profile. Once I have your details I can find out what is going on.
Cheers
Sean
BTCare Community Manager
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry that we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)

BT Callout Fee

Dear BT,
I just wanted to voice my utter disgust at how I have been treated in relation to a call out charge.
I was experiencing intermittent broadband performance issues and poor call quality.
To confirm it wasn't our equipment, everything was disconnected from the master socket and we tried:
- Connecting one phone - the call noise was still present.
- Connecting the ADSL router - the broadband speed was still abysmal.
We called the BT helpdesk, the chap at the call centre advised me that there was a buzz on my line and after going through some checks decided an engineer was required. He said an engineer was required, we didn't request one.
The engineer visted and said there was nothing wrong and the fault must be with our equipment. We checked our equipment and nothing is wrong.
So nothing has been fixed and AND WE'VE BEEN CHARGED A CALL OUT FEE OF £130.
Thanks a lot BT!

Welcome to this forum. This is a BT domestic customer to customer help forum, any messages posted here do not go to BT.
If you would like to contact one of the UK based BT Care Team who moderate this forum, they may be able to sort this out, as the charge may have been raised in error. They will take ownership of the fault until it is fixed.
They can be contacted using this link BT Care Team
They normally respond by phone or e-mail, within three working days, however you should get an immediate confirmation, with a tracking number.
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.

Re: Another 'Engineer' callout charge

Hi, first time posting but i am so frustrated not being able to get an answer on the phone from BT within a reasonable amount time (25 minutes last time i called i had to hang up) i have decided to try my luck on here. I had an engineers visit a couple of weeks ago. All internal wiring to the master socket had already been disconnected. The fault was showing as outside the property but BT insisted the engineer would need to come inside and i might, but probably wouldn't be charged. Things are a bit tight money wise so i was reluctant but agreed due to pressure on the phone from BT. No surpise to anyone reading this that i just been charged (£129.99) for an Engineers ' Home Improvement' callout. All the Engineer did was replace the BT Master Socket. I feel really ripped of by this and would appreciate some help in getting this charge removed without having to spend hours on the phone listening to the 'Were really busy' recorded message. From a customers perspective it might temper the situation if we were given some sort of explanation as to the works carried out and why. It feels like we are just being charged blindly.

FloFosterJenkins wrote:
Hawk wrote:
....This is the second time in 12 months they have sent an engineer round and charged me. ....
and you say "All the Engineer did was replace the BT Master Socket" at the previous visit 12 months ago. If they had to replace the Master Socket, then it sounds like you didn't have a good job done 12 months ago, and they left you with a potential fault, or installed faulty equipment?
Oops, should have been:
and you say "All the Engineer did was replace the BT Master Socket" at the recent visit. If they had to replace the Master Socket, then it sounds like you didn't have a good job done 12 months ago, and they left you with a potential fault, or installed faulty equipment?

Why such an ordeal to replace a modem? Why is the ...

Have been browsing this forum the past couple of days and whilst my story is quite as horrific as some of the others that I've seen here, it's caused me no end of stress and inconvenience over the past week.
Last Thursday (12/06/14) my BT Open Reach modem stopped working. No lights at all, completely dead. I assumed at the time that it was a power surge that caused it to stop working as I live in a block of flats (and certainly that's what I've been telling the BT Helpdesk people) but absolutely nothing else was affected. Immediately I called up BT and told them what the problem was, I was extremely specific that it was the modem and not the router that was the problem. Fast forward to Monday and I find an Infinity Router outside of my door. Again I call the BT helpdesk up, speak to one person who has to call me back on my mobile so that he can do a line test (why I have no idea, the phone wasn't an issue). This call cuts out for some reason and I have to call back and this time I end up speaking to a very unhelpful and quite frankly rude woman who tells me that a call back has been organised for the 18th (two days away). I get really frustrated at this as I'm to be without internet for even longer and the problem seems to me to be quite easy to fix (send me another **bleep** modem). Why two days away? Why not sooner? The lady tells me that I will just have to wait and when I ask to speak to her supervisor/line manager she hangs up.
So I submitted a complaint via the website as I'm getting extremely annoyed at this point. I'm rang back the following day (17/06/2014, once again by someone outside of the UK, is even the complaints procedure outsourced? Really?) and told that BT cannot deliver an Open Reach modem, it has to be done via an engineer. Why wasn't this explained to me before I ask. Dunno he says, but I will be called back on the 18th. I ask, yet again, why the 18th? Why can't it be arranged now? He quickly dodges my question and reiterates that I would be called back on the 18th.
Today I got a call to organise the engineer call out. The guy I speak to drops the bombshell that I'll have to pay £129 for the pleasure of taking a day off work to be home for the engineer if it's found to be my fault. What he describes as 'my fault' sounds like anything short of the BT CEO turning up at my flat with a shotgun and a burning desire to shoot modems. He tells me that he cannot book the engineer until I verbally agree to these quite frankly ludicrous terms and conditions. I'm very conscious of the fact that I've been telling the helpdesk people that it was a power surge that caused the problem as this will no doubt constitute 'my fault' despite living in a block of flats and the myriad of other devices I have plugged in being fine.
I've been with BT (for the first time) since September and this is the first time I've had to deal with their customer service. I'm finding this all quite incredible, and the thought of ending up with a £129 bill at the end of it inspires awe, literal awe, in me. How the hell is this company's customer service so bad? Are any of the mods here able to help me avoid this stupid callout fee?

then to get an engineer who carries the modems you will need to agree the terms - charge if your fault before they will arrange an appointment
don't know if this helps http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12439/c/
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Charged despite problem not resolved!

i really dont know where to start....
a few months back, our phone line died...no dial tone..silence. the kids had dropped our phone a few times over the few years we'd had it so we bought a new phone...same problem. broadband connection was still fine though (and still is). so I ran through all the checks...disconnecting everything, unscrewing bottom half of main box to access test socket etc. plugged phone in......nothing. after all this i rang bt via my mobile (at cost!) to be told that they could send an engineer out but that we could potentially incur a callout charge of £130.00 if the fault originates after the main box (ie that we would not incur a charge if the fault occurs with anything upto and including the main box). I'll be honest and say at this time, I could not afford such a potential fee, so decided to make do with mobile use until I could afford the potential fee.
meanwhile, I recieve a letter from sky threatening to charge me more on my subscription with them, as I didnt have them connected to my phoneline.....I did but the boxes were unable to make their test calls due to the line problem.
faced with further cost, i had no chance but to gamble....and arranged an engineer visit.
the engineer called, glanced at the antique wiring coming into the property, took a cursory look at the main box, fiddled with the wiring (between outside and the main box) and changed the face on the main box. then confidently told me I needed a new filter....10mins and he was out the door! he then sat in his vehicle outside the house for 20-30mins.
line was working, hurrah! not...... bought a new filter....called sky out, resolved that issue.....then.....same fault...internet fine, no phone line, no dial tone, nada. whilst calling our number goes straight to 1571 as if line is busy.
I then notice that bt intend taking a £130.00 charge via direct debit....to say my jaw dropped.....
in this past week, i've noticed openreach engineers working in our area... in fact 1 van at either end of our street. I took the opportunity of approaching one of the engineers to ask if it was our problem he was working on. he stated no, it was the local golf club they were working on but had come across a fault that will have been affecting the area potentially for the last few months as a result of their work there. he stated that the fault i was experiencing had been reported to him by about 5 other local people, and whilst I was speaking to him another local resident gave a similar account.
encouraged by this conversation, i risked calling bt using my mobile......lines busy - leave number for callback in 1 hour.......no callback, tried this 2 more times.....same scenario. barring cancelling dd, I had very few options left, so i gave them 1 more try on thursday, got through to india.....they spent 27 minutes telling me that the engineer fixed the fault, before suggesting that they transfer me blind to the faults line, refusing to have to explain myself all over again, i insisted that they explain situation before transferring me through. the guy I was speaking to begrudgingly agreed to this only to come back to me after about 5minutes of hold music and state that the faults department would call me within 10 minutes.....
......they called me an hour and 10mins later, introducing themselves as being from the BROADBAND faults department, that they were very busy right now and would give me a call in 10mins.......suffice to say that is the last i've heard from them....
given the fact that the fault is not beyond the main box, by bt's own statement, I do not owe a callout fee, given that the DD is due to be claimed and the complete lack of customer service I have no choice but to suspend my DD (only allowing what should be claimed) as given the level of competence displayed already, I have no confidence in recovering funds claimed incorrectly if i was to allow bt to claim what they want to.
ultimately
*I want the fault fixed
*I do not want to pay for something that hasnt been done
*I am willing to pay if it can be proved that it is something in my house beyond the main box that is causing the fault
*I do not want to jump through hoops to get the matter resolved
*I am more that willing to play fair on this, but all I seem to be encountering is lies, failed service and stealth charging
please help, someone!

Hi Shalhassan,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for posting. I would like to look into this for you.
Please drop me an email via the 'Contact Us' link in my profile. (click on my name and you will find the link under the "about me" section). Include your BT account details and the link to this thread.
Cheers
Sean
BTCare Community Manager
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry that we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)

Re: My Landline is Dead but the internet works !

Hi Keith, re: PROBLEM: Intermittent dial tone, incoming calls are low-volume and crackly but internet works fine, I have managed to call BT 151 once via the landline. The automated BT Line test showed "No Problem". I tested with a working corded phone via the Test Socket; still no joy so the fault is definitely BT socket onwards. I logged the fault with BT and subsequently called 151 the next day. The adviser suggested waiting 24 hours. The problem has been getting worse over a period of a week but I hadn't realised until the "NO DIAL TONE" problem. My question is; "If a BT engineer visits my house, how do I NOT get charged a callout fee?"

Amazingtog wrote:
Hi Keith, re: PROBLEM: Intermittent dial tone, incoming calls are low-volume and crackly but internet works fine, I have managed to call BT 151 once via the landline. The automated BT Line test showed "No Problem". I tested with a working corded phone via the Test Socket; still no joy so the fault is definitely BT socket onwards. I logged the fault with BT and subsequently called 151 the next day. The adviser suggested waiting 24 hours. The problem has been getting worse over a period of a week but I hadn't realised until the "NO DIAL TONE" problem. My question is; "If a BT engineer visits my house, how do I NOT get charged a callout fee?"
BT retail provide a good help guide here.Fixing phone faults
If its noisy at the test socket, and you have tried another phone, then that usually points to an external fault.
However you must check to see that you have not connected any wires to any terminal boxes before the master socket.
Some people have done this in the past, to add phone extensions, with the result that they have been charged for a visit if that was the cause of the fault.
My picture below shows what I mean.
If you are 100% sure that there is nothing else internally connected to your wiring, then the fault is external and you should not be charged.
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.

Infinity Problems

I was quite excited to get the new Infinity service last Friday but I've had nothing but reliability problems and now have a total loss of service. When the installation engineer o ld me to expect it to fluctuate for the first week, I didn't expect this.
When first connected, I was consistently seeing 33Mbps downstream and 6.8Mbps upstream. Previously,
I had ADSL2+ with typically between 11 - 14Mbps (down) and 1.2 - 1.6Mbps (Up) on any given day.
Everything appeared to work well on both my wired and wireless devices for the first day, and I ran regular speed tests 10 times each hour to see what kind of mean performance I was getting. Strange thing was that I noticed performance was dropping mostly from 10pm onwards where the max downstream would be 16Mbps until about 8am when it would go back up to 25Mbps+. The upstream performance was also degraded.
By Sunday around midday I was seeing regular loss of connectivity with my Draytek router reporting that "the server was not responding". By this morning I had a total loss of service.
I reported this to the customer service people who told me a fault was logged because they could see a line fault and that someone would respond within 2 days. Over an hour later, I thought I'd check to see what was going on and was promptly told not to call back again within two days as they would only generate another fault call. Confusingly the girl also told me not to cal back within a week!!!!
It's obvious there's a problem as the BT Modem's DSL light is off and only blinks briefly when I try to instigate a connection.
I know this isn't a business service, but I was supposed to be working from home to day too, so no luck there.
I've always had a a small amount of noise on the line and BT have come out three times in the last 6 years to attend but I've never had it like this before.
Has anyone else noticed a similar problem with their infinity service so short after installation?
Did the BT installer just not terminate the wires on the back of the face-plate properly or could it be another problem?

So I lost half a days pay, but it looks as if my Infinity service is finally working.
At last, an engineer appeared that actually understood and could articulate how the Infinity service works and who could troubleshoot properly and in a logical and iterative manner. Before he started, I explained what I'd observed through my trending of the last 7weeks, and that despite repeated remote and locally run line tests by BT, I was told that there was nothing significantly wrong. And that when I disputed this, it was largely dismissed. I also told him the history of noise related issues over the last six years and although I thought I'd only called BT out three times, I recalled that those three times were regarding noise on the voice circuit and that BT had attended site to attend with ADSL and phone issues at least 8 times since I'd moved in, and that the last time the engineer ran a new length of copper from the eaves of my house to the data point on the ground floor.
He plugged in the usual diagnostic equipment and this time explained to me that he could see huge numbers of CRC errors, similar to the one's I'd been seeing using my IP monitoring software. It was a relief that someone actually agreed with me that this was happening! He also left it plugged in for more than a few minutes so he got a better idea of what was happening.
He also showed me that as a result my bandwidth availability was fluctuating, and explained that the auto-profiling would attempt to stabilise the service. I asked if anyone monitored for the number of instances of this type of event and he said that it's only likely that someone would look at this kind of information if it appeared that many events were affecting their infrastructure but they were largley not interested in the last mile or tail circuit. They would just wait until customers complained of poor performance.
He also accepted my rationale that my equipment had nothing to do with the problem as the Infinity modem's DSL light was either dead of occasionally flashing. I told him I'd changed the RJ11 cable for another BT provided cable and my own Belkin shielded version. But for the sake of troublshooting properly he checked with his own cable - and it made no difference.
He knew from his monitoring equipment that the problem lay between the physical cable from my house to the termination point in the green box, since his tests at the switch-end showed a fully operational service.
I felt I could trust this bloke and the information he was showing me, so I asked him to hear me out on what I thought the root cause could be based on all the issues I've had over the last 6 years. In my view, it was a no brainer that the cabling must be at fault, and that even though part of the last section of copper had been replaced, there must be another physical fault somewhere.
I told him the only last night, I made a few calls and each time they felt as if the recipient at the other end was in an echoey room. And considering I had invested in the latest Siemens crystal clear handsets I was surpised so I plugged in one of my ancient analogue handset and found the same problem.
Of course, but how could there be a problem considering the last three calls I made to BT over the last week, they confirmed the line was perfect with no real traceable noise issues???? And the previous engineers who visited also concurred with this. At that point the engineer really showed his knowledge of troubleshooting and explained that the remote test that are performed to check for noise are quite crude and although they may look for voltage drops they are nothing short of a rudimentary continuity test. So I asked him if he should perform some more robust check on each physical section and he agreed it would be the best thing to do, and off he went to the pole outside my house.
So what was the cause? It turned out that the termination of the copper pair at the telegraph pole outside my house was the culprit. To put it simply, the very old corroded/oxidised cable was extremely fragile and a visual inspection would miss what a firm tug would reveal. So a strip down and re-termination was all that was required.
When I asked him why after several repeated complaints to BT over the years about noise did no one ever check the physical connections, he admitted that most engineers would just look to see that the physical connections were present and that there were no obvious breaks. They would also do a basic line check but perhaps not a more thorough examination. He concluded that it was possible that this had always been an issue just getting worse over time and apologised that no one ever checked properly.
I thanked him for being honest and didn't blame him but did tell him I would try again to complain to Customer Services to see what they were willing to do about re-imbursements.
I always did wonder why my ADSL2 service was never as good as several of my neighbours' in my estate,and when I challenged my previous ISPs, they told me I should be grateful for what I had considering my distance from their core switch. So now I know.
It was down to the noise issue that I first raised 6 years ago, that was caused by a physical cabling issue.
If only the score of engineers who came out over the last 6 years were as thorough, knowledgeable and willing to talk about their troubleshooting process as the bloke who came today.
Fingers crossed, this service will now work.
I'm now seeing typical latency figures of between 3 and 60ms to random sites in the UK, which between excellent and very good. I've only seen three instances of the connection being dropped since 11am when the engineer left today, which is 20 times less than my previous typical day and 200 times less than my worst day.
I think there's a long way to go before BT can offer a truly customer oriented service from many angles:
1) Train technicians to a higher standard, start with the basics of troubleshooting faults in a logical and thorough manner. 6 years is a long time to resolve a physical line problem.
2) Train technicians to be more customer oriented
3) Customer service could do what they are paid to do and respond to me, even just once would be nice and please stop trying to deflect or avoid the subject of re-imbursements where BT are clearly at fault.
4) Improve your automated problem management by using your auto-generated MI in a smarter and more proactive way. If you've got the intelligence to throttle back or re-profile a service in an attempt to make a poor situation slightly more stable at the expense of the end-user experience i.e. slower but still error-prone service, how about putting together the evidence that a customer has repeatedly complained about poor service and the fault trending data you can see, so how about assigining an engineer to get to the root cause of the problem, as your customers will be much happier with your service. In this case, I wouldn't have been chasing you up for 6 years with a plethora of repeat problems. It could have saved a huge amount of money on the score of engineer callouts I've had.
5) How about keeping together all the records of faults a user has, so when a customer really has had a rough time Customer service and the customer can both look at the same information and agree what the best course of action is, instead of expecting the customer to keep a log of all conversations, emails etc and asking them to recall events each time. Even keeping a track of the reason for the call would be useful, since I'm frequently frustrated by BT not knowing that I'm chasing up on an issue I've raised before as the have no log of previous calls!
I'm still dissatisfied about the level of customer service and when I get some time I'll try and speak to them again about my re-imbursement.

No dial tone for the second time now

Hi guys,
Back in late November 2013 I discovered that the phone was not working correctly that being no dial tone and a faint outside crackling noise coming through, I couldn't call out or receive calls however when I called my phone the line rang fine but it was not coming through the headset, My broadband was still working perfectly fine so I instantly thought it was the headset and ordered a new one only to discover that it in fact wasn’t the problem at all. I began to call BT to report the fault and was directed straight to an Indian call centre the guy when through normal line testing faults only to come back with no faults found I told him that on my mobile my house is ringing but none of my headsets old or new was physically ringing we then went on to do the master test socket test and again same problem. After that he arranged an engineer to come out to have a look and was told the usual ''you may be charged if you have caused the fault'' blah blah now into December and I finally get an engineer out to have a look the engineer when on to say that whoever initially installed the face plate put a faulty one and that was the problem but if that was the case how had I been able to use my house phone perfectly fine prior to this problem? I asked the engineer if I would be charged for this call out and his said NO as it was not my fault, all things fixed and working.
My January bill came and what do I see £179 bill I look at the bill to see I’ve been charged for the engineer callout, furious I call BT in which this time I’m directed to English speaking people at last. I explain all of the above to the operator and go on to tell them I was told there would be no charge so they check the engineer report and then they tell me the engineer reported that the faceplate was damaged, I’m then question by the operator and asked how I had damaged the faceplate I told him what the engineer told me and that my master socket is up high on my window seal out of reach of my son so there was no way he damaged it, they told me they would look into for me and get in contact within 5 days. 5 days pass and I get the call saying sorry for mistake your money will be back in your account in 3 days well that’s great news.
Now I’m having the very same problem with my phone line no dial tone slight crackling sound but this time when I ring from my mobile may house phone rings fine but when I answer it up it continues to ring even though I’ve pressed the accept button I also cannot decline the call from the headset it really frustrating, I’ve tried to get though to BT but the queue times are just ridiculous even tried the call back feature and yet 3 hours later still nothing I’m not going to pay for a service I’m not receiving and I’m most definitely not going to pay engineer charges only to be refunded 10 days later a complete waste of time. I need my phone line fixed please can someone help me out here and give me some advice.
Many Thanks
Mike

jdybnsn wrote:
I have the exact same problem (also my second time in 4 months). Very frustrating as this is our business phone and it is frustrating knowing people are calling us but we can't pick up the calls ! More frustrating that its almost 2 days and no sign of an engineer !
You need to raise this on the Business Forum, this one is for residential customers.
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Ongoing and Unresolved phone line and broadband pr...

I am trying to help my elderly neighbours resolve an ongoing phone line problem. We both keep reporting the issue but keep being passed from pillar to post. We are fairly certain its a line problem outside of the house (we have checked everything we can for them)
The problem is causing terrible crackling on the phone line to the point where they cannot hear people on the phone and their new quality laptop just cannot run. They struggle to get out and rely on their phone and were hoping to order shopping online etc.
So they are are paying £13 a month for no service and they are finding this whole experience very upsetting. We are disappointed with Bts service so far
Can anybody help please ?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

you should be able to report your phoneline fault to 151 but no mention of broadband.
I would just check that the phone is connected to the filter in the master socket to make sure problem is outwith the home and not internal. internal fault could cost you the callout fee
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Decreasing speeds, non existant customer service.

Thanks BT for yet another amazing customer service experience.
On the 30th my broadband kept dropping and reconnecting which you blamed on an exchange fault, and told me it would be fixed.
Next you booked me an engineer callout without telling me. The first I heard about it was when he phoned me at work to say he was outside when I was the other side of London.
I called again, you rebooked the engineer for Friday 3rd June, despite me telling you there would be no-one home to let him in. Unsurprisingly he also phoned me at work on Friday to tell me I wasnt home.
Meanwhile the broadband disconnecting problem seems to have fixed itself, hurrah!
Sadly the connection stabilty came at the cost of 50% of my download speed. I used to get 38mb/s now I get 19mb/s if I'm lucky.
The drop in my upload speed is even more impressive: from around 7mb/s upload it currently stands at a whopping 0.44mb/s.
Interestingly my IP profile according to the BT Speedtester suggests a 20mb download which is much lower than it used to be. It also says 10mb upload, which I get nowhere near.
I was feeling optimistic and thought I'd try support again. I enjoy being told to reset my equipment in broken English while another mythical "line test" is run. However this time I dint even get that far.
I called 100, they told my they were busy and they could log a call back, I was shocked - a sensible idea! I left my mobile number and lo and behold 20 minutes later a call from BT!.... from the wrong department.
After a fruitless 10 minute conversation where the cheerful girl said "uh-huh" to everything I said, she then put me throught to the broadband fault line and I was promptly disconnected.
I think I shall try the 0800 111 4567 line - it's started ringing at 21:18 - updates to follow...

Unfortunately, I'm getting the same experience.
I was exstatic to actually be pulling around 38Mb when my Fibre was installed, trouble is, that was short lived.
I run a business from home, so I was ordering Infinity as soon as the lines opened on the day my exhange started taking orders. Sure enough, the engineer said I was no.1 in my area.
Unfortunately, those speeds have already slid in just a few months
To make things worse, there is a known fault with the Openreach Fibre Modems. Eventually they will pack-up!
A component inside overheats and the modem is toast. I thought it was strange when (on installation day) the engineer made a point of stating they can't be put down on carpet.
After the really hot weather about 9 days ago, my Openreach Fibre Modem suffered this fatal fault and my service was down for a day. The engineer swapped the Openreach box and everything was fine again, but they are still trialing a replacement, so this unit will no doubt fail at somepoint too.
To compound matters, they practice a standard procedure of capping your line when theres a fault and even though they insist the caps have now been removed, I'm only getting just over 20Mb 9 days later.
I'm grateful for what I'm getting on the one hand, but before anyone moans about their paulty ADSL speeds, that's not the point. I'm paying quite a lot of business broadband and I was quite hoping with Infinity and beyond (pardon the pun), we would have finally got away from the sales & marketing speeds versus the real world

Engineer callout fee dispute

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