Openreach does not charge end users directly, they charge service providers i.e. the company you pay for your voice service or DSL service - or the company your provider buys services from (reseller).

Your SP charges you - the criteria used to pass on (or not) charges differs between SPs.

It's a complex market - some providers of services have a direct relationship with Openreach, others resell products of those direct providers, others resell products of those resellers and so on.

The resold channel is 4 or 5 tiers deep in places as the VARs (Value Add Resellers) get involved - these are the guys that bundle up your voice, data, VPN & IT hardware needs into one price point. This seems bad in that it removes you further from your actual underlying connectivity provider. Then the bean counters take a look at how the sums can be pushed into capex and the tax advantage of putting the whole deal on finance and offseting the interest against taxable profit.

I digressed....

Thanks Both your responses have been most helpful.

DEL's, PW's, Megastreams, you name it we use it, alot less these days as we are expanding our own comm's network massively to mitigate BT's 21CN's issues, not exactly time critical stuff friendly.

Not sure if you've got sorted but, after changing modems, filters cables and god knows what else... I discovered my Broadband would stay on when the lights in my house were OFF.. I later whittled it down to a duff transformer for these new stupid low power lights you have to have these days Might be worth checking stuff like that out too if you haven't done so already!?

Just as well I didnt report a line fault given these call-out charges..! :/

Edited by ste__ (Wed 23-Mar-11 21:41:45)

In reply to a post by Rockh:

Provided the fault is on the BT network you won't pay anything, it's only if a fault is found on your setup that you'll incur charges. They don't charge upfront, it's retrospective, you just have to be told that there will be a charge etc.

The impression I get is they will initially look for a fault on customer equipment, if one is found then any investigation stops there and a charge is raised. If it were me if I am going to pay for a callout I would insist on full checks been made before I handover a penny. I would also want a paper receipt of such work.

On my last line fault BT's first test was to start 'my side' of the NTE5 - he got a "strange" reading on his machine - "the problem is in the house".

I told him to just stick it in the TEST SOCKET and see what that says - "oh yeah there's a line problem" and replaced damaged cable in the road!

In reply to a post by b4dger:

On my last line fault BT's first test was to start 'my side' of the NTE5 - he got a "strange" reading on his machine - "the problem is in the house".

I told him to just stick it in the TEST SOCKET and see what that says - "oh yeah there's a line problem" and replaced damaged cable in the road!

Strange - when I had an SFI visit last summer, the first thing he did was unscrew the face plate from the NTE5 and connect his box to the test socket - whilst explaining to me that if this test passed, the problem was in the premises. Took him a while but he found the problem on the BT line - perils of living in a block of flats, one fault was in the corner of a random cupboard in the communal area. General decay.

Yep - that sounds the right way to do it to me!

I had the test socket already exposed so it was up to BT which side they decided to test first. It would be more professional to ensure 'their side of things' is without fault first but I guess it's all down to the individual engineer.

the problem with that kind of test is its no good for finding intermment faults. Also if the fault doesnt stop connecting but just a reduction in sync speed they will deem it as fine.

Thanks for your interest. I don’t know whether I’m sorted or not. Certainly, my issue had nothing to do with lights on/off switches of any household appliance.

My line is not what is was before this issue started on 3 March. My ISP ran a copper line test on 18th and reported that this check was failing. Another fault was logged with BT. A week later, BT replied that their network tests suggested nothing amiss. I am not prepared to meet fees of the kind quoted...or even risk it. That sort of money would finance a cable set up--- though that’s not really something I want.

Looking on the bright side, though, since 25th, I’ve only had one sync drop—and that had nothing to do with use of telephones that had been the dominant albeit not sole factor. Curiously, BT are currently hard at work in my exchange with PEWs from 28/3-4/4/11.