Landline fault and engineer call-out charges

phaxx

My family have their home phone and DSL service through BT. A few weeks ago, the line became almost unusable for voice due to a constant severe crackling noise. We still get a (very poor) dialtone, we can make/receive calls, but it's pointless as you can't hear anything.

The DSL service on the same line still seems to be working reasonably well. It's poorer than usual, but it's quite usable.

We called BT, who said they would run a remote test on the line. They claim they did this, and no fault was apparent. Apparently the charge for getting an engineer to look at it is 95 euro if the problem isn't BT's fault.

I have disconnected all of our internal equipment and tested a simple handset -> socket connection with two different handsets and cables, and the problem still exists. Furthermore, I used another cable and some crocodile clips to connect a handset directly to the thick copper pair that brings the line into the house, and the problem still exists there, so it can't be any of our internal wiring.

This problem doesn't seem to be caused by any of our equipment, so it would appear to be time to risk the engineer's call out charge.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Snaga

You seem to have covered your bases there.

You should be provided a good voice service to the first phone socket in the house - that is your demarc. Your testing beyond this point with everything else disconnected would show clearly enough that the proble exists external to your home.

That said - no one on an internet forum can give you a guarantee that your provider wont try to charge you, but you've done as much as you can to remove your internal wiring from the equation.