BT Callout

[Umpire]

I called to see a mate of mine today who is having problems with his phone.BT have told him that the call out charge will be £160 if the fault is found to be within his property.
How can they possibly  justify this extortionate amount ? maybe to pay the unbelievable amount they are paying to show football.

[Fly]

TalkTalk charged my £65 the other month for a call out that they decided I needed.
They refunded me in total when I pointed out that they had already admitted it was a fault with their equipment.
I'd already told them I didn't need an engineer !!

[bransoj]

The BT thing has been there for a while but thats gone up since the last time i used them. I had an issue with my line that was affecting my broadband that was with Sky. Did loads of tests with them and they said they were more or less certain it was the line coming into the house not something in the house but had to tell me that BT could charge me £90 at the time if it was find to be a fault in the house. As it turned out the line from the pole to the corner of the house was frayed at one end and barely attached hence the issue so no charge and then a second time it was from the corner of the house to the main point in the house that was the issue so neither time was i charged.

There are tests you can do to pretty much be certain its not something in the house thats causing the issue and have BT out without worrying about getting charged. I assume its there to stop people just calling them out to houses for any time a phone line isnt working when it could be something else attached to the line in the house thats nothing to do with BT and wasting their time.

If you take the front of the main phone socket there is a test socket inside. If you plug a phone or broadband router into that and you still have an issue then you can be pretty sure its a BT fault outside the house and you wont be charged. Using that test socket eliminates any other connections to the phone line inside the house like extensions into other rooms etc.

[Umpire]

I have that unit but he only has the one which you can plug in your phone cable.

[bransoj]

You need to unscrew the front plate and then it looks like this inside :-