BT Engineer Callout Charges - how BT try and impose these charges in cases where they have already agreed their own equipment is at fault. Many elderly and/or not technically minded people may be charged unfairly by BT.

This webpage also details how to complain - and how to test a BT line to ensure you are not charged callout fees to repair faults that are clearly BT's responsibility.

This webpage primarily details my experiences with BT's fault repair service over several years. In particular, when dealing with intermittent faults on a BT phone line, BT seem prone to try to levy the £125 engineer callout charge even in cases where their own staff have previously agreed that 'noise on the line' must be owing to faults with the BT network and that are clearly their responsibility to repair. I now have three examples of this behaviour.

It has happened to me twice - the most recent case being in January 2010. This webpage was created as a consequence of my annoyance with the way BT handled my subsequent complaint on 18 January 2010 and in the knowledge that many (especially elderly) people may be charged unfairly by BT - and yet not have the knowledge or technical ability to argue with BT's 'Customer Satisfaction' staff. I have undertaken repair of consumer electronics for many years and have a PhD in physics - so perhaps I am not a typical BT customer.

Curiously, BT claimed also to have sent me an email on 5 January 2010 outlining the impending imposition of this £125 charge - yet I did not receive this email. They have also said that the charge was clearly shown on my on-line bill (which of course I never look at unless I am alerted to a problem, and they know this full well from my log-in history.)

The first I knew of this £125 engineeer callout charge was when I noticed my Direct Debit payment had increased from £27 per month to £76 per month in January 2010. I logged into BT.com to investigate why. The website requested that I update/confirm my email address because an email sent to me had not been delivered. How very convenient - and suspicious! BT continue to send me offers of Broadband and other services by email and these seem all to arrive. Yet the one email not to arrive to the same email address (unchanged over many years) was perhaps the one detailing an unwarranted charge of £125. How curious.

I have had other arguments with BT also - most notably when they changed the terms of charging for evening calls from 5p per hour to 90p per hour and yet mentioned this only in the smallest of small print in one of their 'Update' brochures. I obtained a refund of £7 after arguing for about an hour with a senior manager. This was in June 2008. Of course, £7 is so trifling a sum of money as to be insignificant - but it is the principle that matters. Once again, many elderly and vulnerable people would have been caught out by sly BT marketing policies. In February 2008 BT sent out a letter "Important information about your Calling Plan" saying that Option 1 customers would receive Free UK weekend calls - but no mention of the huge increase in evening call charges!

Now back to engineer callout charges!

BT operate a strict callout charge regime - if you report a fault on a BT phone line and if that fault is traced to your own equipment (maybe a faulty phone, or faulty wiring within your home) then you will be charged a £125 call-out fee. This is fair enough - BT is only responsible for faults on their lines (external to your home and up to an including the main box (see photos below, yet to be loaded)).

However, many faults of 'noise on the line' are intermittent, that is, they do not occur all the time. Because of this, they can be difficult to trace. BT can use reflectance and other methods to 'check a line' remotely to try to determine where (roughly) the fault is originating. Often, these electronic tests are unable to detect or locate faults that give rise to intermittent line noise.

Here is the type of charge you may expect to see levied on your bill - this resulted from an engineer's visit in September 2009 and which lasted over 2 hours. After I had explained the history of line faults to the engineer in some detail (not something that most customers might be able to do) he changed the line right the way to the exchange in Sidmouth. This produced a clear line (no different to when he arrived though), yet when he was about to leave he detected a slight line noise. In frustration, he changed the wires from behind my master box to the first junction outside the house - this appeared to cure the fault but in fact achieved nothing - the fault had just gone away by itself, as it often has done.

Several months later, in December 2009, before I even knew about the £125 charge levied in Sept/Oct 2009, a severe line noise fault again occurred. I once again tested the wiring to confirm that the fault lay within the BT network, not within my domestic phone wiring. When phoning BT I outlined quite clearly (as I always do) that I was speaking from a known 'good phone' plugged directly into the rear of the main BT socket and with the rest of my internal phone wiring therefore out of circuit. I agreed with the operator that the fault must lie with the BT system because the noise could be heard clearly. BT fault-reporting operators are trained to warn every customer about the £125 charge if no fault is found - but this does NOT apply if the fault is clearly with the BT network and not inside the house and (utilising common sense) obviously not in cases where the operator can hear severe noise on the line when a single 'good' phone is plugged into the back of the BT master socket. If noise can be heard under these test conditions, the fault is the responsibility of BT and should be repaired at their cost, no matter how many visits are required.

I asked that this fact (that the operator could hear the noise) be noted on the call log - I always do this to help ensure that unwarranted charges are not subsequently levied. I subsequently phoned BT to say 'don't bother to come' because the fault had cleared and the weather was appalling. I suggested (helpfully) that BT would have better things to do with their available engineers with so many weather-related faults probably being reported. I said I would phone back again if the fault returned - which it did a short time afterwards. The phone line continued to be awful for several days but (of course) again cleared just before the engineer arrived in early January 2010.

SeeRed home page.