£65 Charge if my 3rd party router is faulty?

[#1]

I've been having some dropouts on my ADSL, they seem to be quite regular on a daily basis so I called Plusnet support. The agents I talked to were friendly & ran some tests which seemed to suggest a problem on the line so a BT engineer was booked. During the booking process it was explained that if the fault was due to my internal wiring or damage I'd caused to the wall box or if my router had been 'tampered with',  I would be charged £65.

As I'm sure that none of these are the case, I agreed to the engineer visit. A short while later I got a text which also stated that if no fault was found I'd be charged £65 so I called Plusnet again to see if this was correct and was told, yes, if no fault is found, I'll be charged. As no one was certain there is a fault on the line, we agreed to cancel the visit and continue to monitor the line for a few days.

From reading the terms in the fault ticket, it seems that I will also be charged if my 3rd Party router is at fault, although on the call, I was assured that I'd only get charged if the router had been tampered with, not if it was simply faulty?

Here's the ticket wording..

"If the engineer finds the problem is with your internal wiring, your equipment, the condition of your property and its boundary, or if no fault is found, you will be charged £65 to cover the cost of the engineer."

Does 'your equipment' include my router?

Thanks.

[#2]

@cancunia 

In a word yes.

The responsibility of Openreach ends at the test socket located in the rear of your master socket. If you have a Plusnet hub that’s still under guarantee plugged into this test socket, not the faceplate, I would assume this to also be covered. Apart from that it’s in all probability over to you.

What testing have you done from your end? What precisely is your problem?

[#3]

In answer to your question, the answer is yes. Only if your router is one supplied by PN, and still within its 12 month warranty period would you be exempt.

[#4]

"Your equipment" definitely includes your router, and also your microfilter. But there's another little nasty in that BT (Openreach) sometimes classify a fault as "customer equipment" solely because they haven't found a fault on the line.  I've experienced this when a deaf engineer couldn't hear the noise on the line, so classed it as "Right When Tested", and on occasions when it's an intermittent fault not showing at the time the OR guy turned up.

In these cases it's sometimes a good idea to talk it through with your provider (Plusnet) and get them to agree that your tests have ruled out your equipment, before committing to the visit. Plusnet have the ability to challenge any charge from OR.

Ideally I would recommend anyone to have a spare router and microfilter for test purposes. Any sort of cheap router will do, so long as it actually works.

[#5]

Thanks for the replies, I thought it was likely that my router would be classed as 'your equipment' so thought it best to get others opinions. When I talked with Plusnet about the OR visit, I'm sure that I was told that I'd only be charged if the router was at fault and if it had been tampered with, but the wording on the ticket suggests otherwise.

The router in question is a BT 2700HGV Business Hub, they work exceptionally well on long ADSL lines like mine. Unfortunately the first one that I had got zapped by lightning a few weeks ago & I'm now using the second one that I bought, it was new out of the box when I got it but is probably at least 10 years old. 

The problem that I reported was that my line kept dropping on a daily basis, no faults were found on the remote tests so an engineer visit was booked. Since the testing was done, the line has been stable so maybe that's fixed it.

** In case anyone from Plusnet reads this, please Do Not make any changes to my line without contacting me first **

[#6]

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@cancunia wrote:

The router in question is a BT 2700HGV Business Hub, they work exceptionally well on long ADSL lines like mine.

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I do something similar, using my own choice of kit to suit my line. If you got a Plusnet router it's worth hanging onto that specifically for cases like this. 

[#7]

"If the engineer finds the problem is with your internal wiring, your equipment, the condition of your property and its boundary, or if no fault is found, you will be charged £65 to cover the cost of the engineer."

This is why it pays to make d**** sure you know where the fault is (outside your premises) before you call for an engineer! Hence the importance of using the test socket for your tests.

"outside your premises" usually means anywhere before the 'consumer plate' in your BT/Openworld master socket 
BTW - the 'consumer plate' itself, which defines inside/outside in this matter, is itself defined to be 'inside'. 🤣

However, apart from oxidation causing crackling, which you can usually clean up yourself, the newer LTE 5C socket has nothing (?) to go wrong in the consumer plate - unlike the older LTE 5A socket! However, if an engineer has been called and you still have a 5A, it should be automatically replaced by the engineer on access, without a charge for that.

[#8]

Totally agree about being sure. No fault found used to be a favourite BT response to problems on data circuits, hopefully they have got better in the past few years. No master socket with a test socket to isolate the in house wiring in my house, it's a new Type 5C. The Plusnet agent I spoke to made a note of that, so maybe they make some allowances for that.

Meanwhile, my line is a bit more stable with only 1 dropout in the past few days, oddly enough at a very similar time to the last ones 9:30 am ish.

[#9]

@cancunia  If you have a type 5C  that is the master socket, so I don't know why you think you haven't got one.  If you remove the clipped on front it disconnects any extensions and reveals the test socket, you plug a dangly filter in there to allow a phone and your modem/router to be connected.

[#10]

Interesting, I hadn't realised that!

I'll take a look at some point.

Thanks

[#11]

@cancunia Just a thought, have you still get the original plusnet modem/router? When I have faults I tend to revert back to a known good, complete with cables being swapped out as well. If the fault persists after I have done that, that tends to mean the fault is definitely external.

[#12]

@cancunia 

For more information for the NTE5c click  here

Dan

[#13]

Thanks for the info on the socket. Mine is the 'MK4' socket, installed by BTOR a couple of years ago. I don't have any in-house data or voice wiring, but good to know about the test socket all the same.

I do have a Plusnet router, so can plug that in if the line problems return.

[#14]

Nowhere in this discussion has anything been reported about doing a quiet line test.  From post #5 "Since the testing was done, the line has been stable so maybe that's fixed it." is somewhat indicative of an iffy joint somewhere in the circuit which can give rise to intermittent disconnections and also be "rectified" by the application of test voltage / current.  The same can happen when the ring signal is applied to the line or the phone is taken off hook.  You do have a telephone handset ... yes?

Broadband is not going to work well if the "phone" line is not working properly.

Please perform a quiet line test - dial 17070 select option 2 using a corded phone plugged into the test socket behind the face plate of the master socket. It should be silent. A noisy phone line (or no dial tone) will have a marked adverse impact on the performance of broadband.

If the line is noisy or there is no dial tone, then a PHONE LINE fault needs to be raised with your phone provider. If this is PlusNet, you can report a fault on line using the button below.  From the Q&A list, choose the one which matches the problem, 'open' the 'section' and click the trouble-shooter link.  NB: If you receive a failure message (rather than a log-in prompt) then log-in to the user portal in a different browser tab and attempt to use the trouble-shooter again.

• Phone Faults

Cheeking the telephone line for noise - especially intermittent noise - is an essential step to mitigate the risk of a no fault found (at the time of testing) BTOR engineering charge.  If you do not have a handset, which would you rather do, spend £8 on a basic handset or risk a £65 no fault found at the time of testing charge ... and be no further forward in resolving your issue?

[#15]

Thanks for the tip about the silent line test, I'll be doing that at some point soon.

In fairness to the other responders to the thread, it was really about the potential of getting a charge if my non Plusnet router was found to be faulty, or if the BTOR engineer decided on 'No Fault Found'. All the same, it's good to have some more options towards resolving my problem.