BT Dispute
 

Hi

New to this forum, but pleased to see something like this exists! Looks like there are a lot of problems/issues with BT, so sorry to add to them, but any advice would be appreciated. As usual, it's a lengthy one, but to get to the point:

1) I had a perfectly working phone line, which stopped working one day.
2) BT acknowledged that this was an external problem, and after a week, they fixed the external problem. However, my phone still did not work.
3) After going through all their advice on the phone, I (stupidly) agreed that there was no alternative than to send an engineer out to investigate.
4) An engineer came, and opened the 'BT Master Socket'. he spent five minutes working on it, and said that an extension cable had been fitted, which was not allowed.
5) A bill for £211 came through the post.

My questions:

1) In this case, BT undertaking works outside of my property stopped my phone from working. I appreciate that (the previous owner) had fitted some sort of extension wiring to the BT Master socket - but it worked. That may well be disallowed, but I can't believe it was the cause of the problem. Is there anyone with technical knowledge that can explain why my phone would have stopped working BECAUSE of the extension?

2) I understand that the BT Master Socket is "BT's property" and that you can't open it up. If there was a fault caused by the previous owner messing around with it, then surely BT should be chasing the previous owner - I didn't damage their property! Anyone got any experience arguing this case?

BT are being massively unhelpful and quite threatening. A £211 charge for five minutes work is utterly ridiculous - I wouldn't mind paying a more fair amount....

Thanks

Re: BT Dispute
 

You ARE allowed to fit extension wiring, the user accessible part of the master socket (the bit behind the screws that when undone just pulls away) is where the terminals to do this are. If it was the extension wiring causing the fault then you are liable, but if it was the wiring up to the socket from BT it is still their problem

Re: BT Dispute
 

Hi, thanks for your response. I suspect that it was NOT the user accessible part, since the engineer had to take the face plate off and there were a bunch of wires he was messing around with - didn't look user friendly anyway!

I can't believe it was the extension wiring causing the fault, as the phone always worked. It just stopped after BT repaired their external fault - so I am confused as to why the phone did not start working again...

Thanks

Re: BT Dispute
 

Hi mr_shinobi,

Sorry to hear of your problems. Can you send me a PM with your account details and I can check this out for you?

Cheers,

Keith
BT Support

Re: BT Dispute
 

... this is the part where one of the site admins has to jump in and state that we have checked Keith's credentials and confirm that he is a genuine BT employee. :)

Re: BT Dispute
 

Thanks for double-checking Chris - it is great that this sort of forum exists. I have PM'd Keith with some more details.

Thanks

Re: BT Dispute
 

Thats what happens when ofcom poked there nose in and split openreach up from the main part of BT.

Re: BT Dispute
 

"Removing the faceplate" could be one of two things, 1 is removing a standard faceplate in which case the extension was probably fitted incorrectly if not fitted by BT. 2 is removing the bottom of the plate only, if your telephone plate had a split in it running left to right above the screws and when the bottom was removed the extension was dead then the extension was not the issue. The plate in this case would look like this: Master socket with test section
If you had an internal extension not wired by BT and that was causing an issue then they are within their rights to charge the fee (as they should have mentioned during the troubleshooting phase of the call), if however the issue was not internal then they cannot charge you. So the questions here are:
do you have a split socket on your line,
were you asked to remove the bottom half of this and plug into the test socket,
if you were asked and did this did the extension lose it's dial tone when you went in to the test socket?