Telephone bill shock with an open line still conne...

Question

I don't know whether anyone wants to read and digest this but last month I made a phone call to a large firm that makes bathroom showers, to request a service engineer. I made this call from one of my landline phones (in the hall) and sat down beside the phone and then pressed the speaker phone button so that my partner could hear the conversation. However she had to go away to attend to something and I continued to make my call and discuss my problem.
After about ten minutes I finished my call and placed my handset back on the phone's base but did not hear any dialling tone or open line sound (I had forgotten to press the speaker 'on' button again to turn the phone off, whatever the technical term is).
Nearly two hours later, we both heard a siren which I thought might be my car alarm of indeed someone else's nearby but when I went into the hallway was shocked to realise that it was the phone. I had not put it offline and it had taken all that time for the warning to go off.
Some days later I went online and for no special reason checked my phone's usage as I was coming near to the quarter's end and was shocked to see a charge of £3.82p on my Anytime calls tariff summary. When I delved deeper I found that it was due to that telephone call to the shower company where the phone call was timed at 1hr 47mins or thereabouts. I frankly couldn't understand why my carelessness with that speakerphone had resulted in this happening as I thought, later, that the line would have been cancelled at the other end and why had it taken so long for that warning siren to go off telling me to replace my receiver or in this instance, cancel the speakerphone?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

The call would have remained connected at their switchboard, so unless somebody at their end released the call, then it would stay connected. If they have multiple lines, it could take a long time for anybody to notice.
Once they released the call, it would eventually force release the call, and give you the "siren" or "howler" as its really called.
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.