How do I get an iongoing fault dealt with?

Question

I'm dealing with this on behalf of my sister who is being stressed out by the problems with her phine and trying to get BT/OpenReach to deal with it.
My sister's phone developed a fault in 2011 since which time it has had a intermittent fault the symptons of which have varied. Sometimes she can't make or receive calls - at other times she can make but not receive calls and at other times the line is so crackly that the phone is unusable.
Each time a fault has been reported and in the time it has taken for an engineer to visit the phone has started working again and an engineer states that as the phone is working nothing can be done!
On the first visit the fault was blamed on my sister's phone equipment so we bought new phone - the fault reoccured and my sister plugged a wired phone into the phone input socket where the line comes into the house and the fault was still apparent.
Since 2011 we have lost count of the number of times an engineer has been called out and been unable to help due to the 'intermittent' nature of the fault. One engineer did investigate further and found some corroded wiring at a nearby outside junction box we he rectified and we thought this would solve the problem
A few weeks ago we found that my sister couldn't receive calls - when I rang her the phone rang once and either went dead or I was told there was a fault on the line. We called an engineer who did his usual tests and siadthe line was fine. My sister asked him to ring here phone which he did letting the phone ring once before hanging up. My sister explained that he needed to let the phone ring but he wouldn't listen and aooarently reported the fault as fixed.
I rand the 150 number as soon as my sister emailed me to tell me what had happened and I asked the person on the helpdesk to ring my sister's number himself. The phone rang once and cut out! I asked him if he thought the fault had been repaired and so he reported the fault again to OpenReach who said would have to put the report back into their system and a visit was arranged for the Tuesday after the May Bank Holiday.  WE waited for a call on Tuesday to arrange a time for the visit and when no call was forthcoming I rang 150 again to be told that a visit would be made on the Wednesday morning. 
I travelled to my sister's to wait for the engineer and when no-one showed up rang 150 again to be told that openReach said the report hadn't appeared on their system.  BY this time my complaint had been raised to manager level having already dealt with 3 different supervisors who had failed to ring me back as promised on several occasions.
Again I was told that a report had to be put through the system and the earliest visit would be Friday of that week. Unfortunately I was unable to be at my sister's on that day so a visit was arranged for today Monday 13 between 8:00 and 13:00. Again I set off from home 10 miles away to wait for an engineer. By 13:00 no engineer had visited so I called 150 again to speak to the manager that I had been dealing with. I was promised a call back withing 30 minutes.
Whilst I was waiting my sister's phone rang - it had started working again after over a fortnight of her not being able to receive calls at all and on occasion not make them either. After an hour my call to 150 was returned by the manager who told me the OpenReach hadn't visited as the report hadn't appeared on their system - the second time we had been given this reason in less than a week. The manager said he would raise a fault and get someone to come out on Wednesday but I told him that now after a fortnights downtime the phone was working again and that they had lost the window of opportunity for diagnosing the fault and we would be back on the spiral of reporting a fault - being given an engineer's appointment at  which if the engineer turned up he would tell us that the phone was now working and no fault could be detected so nothing could be done! Over the last few days we have wasted three half days and in my case 3 wasted return journeys of 10 miles each way during the rush hour to wait for a non existent engineer. Not to mention hours spent on the phone repeating the same things and listening to the same excuses and promises that were never kept.
This caused considerable problems as my sister has health issues that mean I need to know I can be in regular contact with her. She has a mobile phone but as it is a pay and go it is used for emergencies only and on one occasion she had accidentally left her phone upstairs. Unfortunately this was at a time that I needed to contact her urgently and her phone at this point wasn't even ringing once to register an incoming call (she was ringing me whenever the phone rang once to check whether I was trying to get through). I was over an hour's travel time away and just couldn't raise her which caused me much anxiety.
As I said my sister has health issues and feels very vulnerable without a reliable phone and for my part I worry that if my sister needs help she will not be able to contact me. Already I headed off to chack on het when I have been unable to raise her by phone.
Can anyone suggest how we are ever going to get out of this impasse? WE would change phone providers but it would appear that even if we do OpenReach would still be responsible for maintaining the line so we would have the same problem.
To be honest it feels as though due to our complaining OpenReach have blacklisted us and are avoiding visiting - maybe we are being paranoid but this is how it feels.
I did try to fill in the Customer Care form but it appears that I needed to have started a thread here before I could do so.

Answer 1

Hi SueG,
Sorry to hear about the problems your having with your BT Retail service.
If you would like to contact the BT Care Team by clicking on the link below.
Contact BT Care Team
The BT Care Team are a BT UK Based specialist team who have a good reputation for solving customer problems.
Once contacting them they will reply either by phone or email within 3 working days, however you will be given a tracking number immediately after sending the request. Please take note of this.
In the mean time you could try connecting to the TEST socket as shown in the image below, as this will eliminate the internal wiring.
Hope you get it sorted soon,
Cheers
jac_95 | BT.com Help Site | BT Service Status
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