BT Trying to raise a charge for an SFI engineer

My dad has had issues with his broadband for several months now, after trying 3 different routers, and filters into the test socket, we finally felt that it was time to get an engineer in.

The engineer was booked and he spent an hour at the premises, he checked the line and he said it was balanced fine, so there was no fault there, then he admitted he didn't know what was causing the dropouts, he then called talktalk to get details on the number of dropouts and when they were happening, he changed the faceplate, for no real reason, then said he was gong to change the pair on the e side of the cabinet. Since then the problem appears to have been cured but they have now raised a charge with my ISP for an SFI visit, stating that no fault found.

I'm going to assume this isn't exactly uncommon? Why are they trying to charge me 156+VAT for their issue??

I went through months of trying different routers to avoid this ridiculous charge!

Probably because the code system is not nuanced enough to convey what provider did, in which case appeal and ensure a concise account of what the engineer did is passed back up the chain by TalkTalk.

Presume this was ADSL2+, since changing an E side is unlikely to affect VDSL2.

Correct, ADSL2+.

The engineer will have reported it back as "no fault found" from the sounds of it.

Here TalkTalk will charge by default:

https://help2.talktalk.co.uk/engineer-charges look under openreach visit.

This is the issue, how can he change the e-side and then deem there to be no fault found? Why would he start changing random things?


What isn't chargeable

Where the cause of the fault lies entirely on the Openreach network outside the customer's property/garden area

Where the cause of the fault is in the exchange on either the Openreach or TalkTalk equipment within the exchange.

In reply to a post by PiKe:

This is the issue, how can he change the e-side and then deem there to be no fault found? Why would he start changing random things?


What isn't chargeable

Where the cause of the fault lies entirely on the Openreach network outside the customer's property/garden area

Where the cause of the fault is in the exchange on either the Openreach or TalkTalk equipment within the exchange.

E side is BT openreach's remit so not chargeable

Hence the anomaly, i.e. on the booked work no fault found, but just in case swapped the E side but showed nothing different in their testing probably, but might have ended up working better for ADSL2+ long term.

Oddly SFI charging is a result of the pressure on costs arising from creation of Openreach i.e. need to attribute engineer time to the right sections etc

seems to be talking about the same thing or very similar, time tt challenged these fees

Rev K

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Hence the anomaly, i.e. on the booked work no fault found, but just in case swapped the E side but showed nothing different in their testing probably, but might have ended up working better for ADSL2+ long term.

Oddly SFI charging is a result of the pressure on costs arising from creation of Openreach i.e. need to attribute engineer time to the right sections etc

line wasn't retested after e-side pair swap, he never returned to the property.

So it's still going off and I've noticed that when the broadband drops, so does the dial tone, there is then a crackling and the dial tone comes back on and broadband begins to reconnect, any ideas?