BT telephone wiring check charges

[Proxima Centauri]

A fortune.

Can I get another company to do this? If so, what type of company do I look for? Just another phone company or are there smaller outfits out there who just deal with wiring issues and such like and charge less?

[ruffers]

Just look though the small ads for, typically, a "BT trained engineer" who installs new sockets at a fraction of the price. Either that or just go wireless.

[Applespider]

Is it because you have a problem on the line and they are telling you that if it's not their problem, you'll have to fork out ?150?

This happened to me a year or so ago and to my grandmother last week. In both cases, we followed their test process through the master socket (the details are online on how to do it) and still had the problem so called them out regardless. Since I knew that all my extension cabling had been put it by them, I figured it was still there problem.

In both cases, it was a problem outside where the wires had corroded. In my case, I had data and no voice, in my grandmother's, she had constant interference. We didn't get charged at all.

The engineer told me that the reason for introducing the charge was because they'd had lots of callouts for people with dodgy DIY cabling (inferior cable quality, bad routing, too long, too many extensions etc) who'd try to cut corners for cost - and were having to fix them free. The charge is supposed to stop that happening. If you're pretty confident in your wiring (other than whatever fault you have!), then I'd do the master socket test and call them out.