Bt Fake Fault Con?

[Barquentine]

Is this genuine or a con? Our BT line went dead a few months ago and was fixed by BT after several days.
Now it's dead again & a voicemail from their overseas call centre said if the fault is inside our boundary they will charge £129 for an engineer to fix it.
They sent an email for us to do an internal line check which (you guessed it) also showed the line as dead. So we must now book their engineer to come fix it!
Is this a money making scam since we cannot independently verify they haven't simply switched the line off to pretend to fix it?

[rockyracoon]

It's not a scam no, if the fault is in your house then you'll have to pay for th engineer to fix it. BT's responsibility is to supply to the front door.

[ukbod2015]

just contact BT on a separate line on a number you know is kosher and ask them

[MTbowels]

Rockyracoon, BT are not responsible for the supply to the front door. They are responsible for the incomer all the way to the Master Socket in a domestic property. This could be some distance in from the front door. In a block of flats, it could be a considerable distance from the front door.

Technically they are not even BT any longer. They are now Openreach.

[sunny-dave]

Take the bottom front off your main (master) socket and check at the test socket with a simple, corded phone - if it's dead there it's BT's problem.

http://www.exbtengineers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BT-Master-Socket-Test.jpg

[Old_Geezer]

If they haven't been to your house then they can not be sure where the fault is and at best are saying they've failed to detect it on their network.

Since the decision to privatise they are now a commercial concern and are responsible for their part only. Which puts folk in the absolutely ridiculous position of not being provided with a service until they risk a huge bill to have something fixed when it may well turn out not to have been their problem anyway. Checks should be a company overhead and free but that's profit chasing for you. We are all the losers for it.

[Canis_Lupus]

I tend to agree with Old_Geezer on this. In addition to Old_Geezer's post perhaps I will add that when BT had no competition not only did they supply the phone line but in the vast majority of case's also supplied the phone as well, therefore when they came out to effect a repair they where repairing their own equipment. Compare that with today's scenario where almost all phones are owned by the customer, therefore BT say if you own it and we repair it expect to be charged for the repair.