Engineer charge

[chelle1271]

Hi...hoping someone can help with this.

 

I just got my phone bill from BT and there is a charge on it for an engineer call out. Now there is a long story behind this that would take forever to go through but in a nutshell

 

I switched from Tiscali back to BT last july....my broadband has been totally awful with many crashes and faults...I've had 10 engineers out to my home and touch wood the fault appears to have finally been fixed two weeks ago. Now if anyone here has ever had to deal with BT tec support, you will know that sometimes you get a great person and sometimes you get a complete *ss for want of a better word! Well on one occasion last december I got one of these who insisted I call BT telephone fault side of things and get that line checked before he would assist me further...I did so and he couldn't detect anything but said he had better arrange for another engineer visit for me and was tomorrow tween 8am and 1pm ok? I said fine and duly cancelled an existing appointment for that date and began the wait for the engineer. Late on in the slot I got a call from the engineer asking what the problem was and I explained the whole situation...he replied that he was at the exchange and couldn't see anything wrong and as this is a broadband fault he couldn't see the point in coming to my house and would close the fault. There is more to this but is basically irrelevant to this particular issue so I won't bore you!

 

So the charge on my bill is for this engineer, who never came to my house! I phoned 150 and explained all this and argued my case and was passed on to another department who supposedly had the final say in billing but was told "the engineer filed a report saying he had tested the line and could find no fault so the charge stands" Well I obviously argued and said "but he never came!!!!" over and over...round and round:rolleyes:

 

The end result of the phone call was an angry me and no change in the bill. Surely this can't be allowed? I said if they were to check the phone records for that day they would see that no line test numbers etc had been dialled from my home and surely this would prove I am telling the truth...and got the response "we have to trust our engineers!!"

 

I'm lost for words to say how angry and frustrated I am...after all the trouble I've had and the unfulfilled (and later denied)promises of compensation from the broadband side of BT and now they've hit me with this!

 

Is there anything I can do to get this charge removed?

 

 

Thanks for any help in advance...and sorry for the essay post

[buzby]

This is another reason why BB over PSTN is such a nonsense. BT's charging structure is based on call-outs, either to fix problems external to your premises (up to the Master Socket) at no cost, or if no fault is found, then at your cost (to pay for the engineers time).

 

With BB, the service can be tested at the exchange, and the line verified forward and back, often making a site visit redundant - especially if the phone line part of the connection is working fine.

 

What 'm not clear about, is where this chargeable event sits in your list of service issues. If your BB was not working to the expected standard, then when WAS it fixed...? Before or after the non-visit from the engineer? OR were there other fault visits that resolved the issue?

 

Most exchanges are unmanned, so sending an engineer to an exchange to run tests would be chargeable if no fault was found - so they are not being perverse in charging. Saying nobody came to your house would not lift the charge, but if a subsequent problem was eventually resolved, then you can point to this as part of the same problem and seek a credit.

 

Intermittent faults are always a problem, especially when there is no problem found when the engineer calls, but they are pretty good at sorting this if the problem is shown (later) to exist, and they refund accordingly.

[chelle1271]

Hi Buzby... it really is a very long winded story, beginning as I said in July last year...basically I was told that I should be able to get 2.5-3meg service no problem..thing is there was a fault on the line that kept making the IP profile crash to 135 kbps resulting in an actual throughput of 49-100kbps...the first engineer to visit changed some wiring and gave me a new master socket, got the IP profile raised and said this should resolve the issue...it did, for about 3 days and then the same thing happened again...when this happened I was getting dreadful static and echo on the phone line...always the same routine with BT tec...check the filters unplug everything...etc etc etc...ok call out the engineer. I must point out at this stage that at no time did anyone ever tell me there could be a charge for this and I was only made aware of the possibility when I discovered the forum on BT.com. The wording was always the same "We need to book an engineer visit, we have a free slot (whenever...either between 8am and 1pm or between 1pm and 6pm) will that be suitable?" there was never any advising of any charges at all!!

 

Well this continued in roughly a 7-10 day cycle for some time and appeared to be fixed eventually...I had a decent connection with no dropouts for about 14 days...then it rained heavily. Back to square one although this time the fault seemed different to me, it was showing slightly different symptoms but with the same end result of the IP dropping to 135 making the connection virtually unusable. The engineers have ALWAYS found there to be a fault, they just haven't been able to pinpoint it and it has been a process of elimination, new lines in various stages, new sockets...moving the socket,switching cables, switching (Pairs?) you name it. It was only the final engineer, god love him, who was determined to get to the bottom of it all and actually really knew what he was on with he came to my house once and then when it crashed again within the week he requested the job when he saw it . He tested and retested at my house then went up the pole , then to the cab up the road and then to the exchange and back to my house again. End verdict? Faulty equipment at the exchange and also a previous engineer had switched me to the worst possible (unbalanced?) cable from the exchange. So fingers crossed the fault is now 100% cured... 18 days and counting! The engineer visit in question was 8th December, the fault finally fixed approx 18 days ago