About to be charged £65 for… what?

[#1]

Sounds like your non standard "phone socket" is wired as an extension to the actual master socket which must be elsewhere in the building (explains why the engineer was working outside your flat on his visit). If the fault is in the wiring from the master socket to your flat then its down to you (or building management) to resolve. A few years ago, my daughter moved into a new  build house and there were problems with the phone line. It proved to be down to the builder's electrician who hadn't wired correctly from the actual BT master socket ,which was situated on an external wall!!

[#2]

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@davidj66 wrote:

I wonder if there is an "external" NTE5 socket elsewhere in the building - and the socket in the flat is effectively an extension?? 

Indeed. This is the latest(?) twist with New Build properties such as blocks of flats. So the subscriber (sorry! customer) cannot even test their own internal wiring AFAICS. Or does somebody know otherwise? I came across this 'problem' last year in a friend's home. £100 bill on its way...

[#3]

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@Browni wrote:

This is what a standard master socket looks like.

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Not any more!

Though it does depend on what you mean by "standard". That looks like an NTE5a, or 5b - don't know the difference. (Choke in bell wire?). Lots of those around, of course. But the current "standard" consumer unit is the NTE5c.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/helpandsupport/how-toguides/howtoguides/downloads/NTE5C_Instru...

 Unfortunately, when it comes to blocks of new flats [since 2008] you could be stuck with one or more of these internally:

http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/images/large/LJU2_front.jpg

And something like this somewhere in your building, maybe even on an external wall:

http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/images/small/openreach_external_NTE_ext.jpg

Trouble is, the line disconnection point (equivalent to the NTE5 consumer removable faceplate) is inside the box. And I believe only accessible to an Openreach engineer.

In which case, AFAICS, if it comes to charges you may have to negotiate with Openreach and the building management.

[#4]

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@pvmb wrote:

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@davidj66 wrote:

I wonder if there is an "external" NTE5 socket elsewhere in the building - and the socket in the flat is effectively an extension?? 

Indeed. This is the latest(?) twist with New Build properties such as blocks of flats. So the subscriber (sorry! customer) cannot even test their own internal wiring AFAICS. Or does somebody know otherwise? I came across this 'problem' last year in a friend's home. £100 bill on its way...

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Just to make clear. This external NTE box was dropped by BT/OR in about 2011. So it was only available for a few years (4 years?) on new build properties. So will still be found on some new build properties from that era (2007 - 2011?) but since then they reverted to installing 'normal' internal NTE5 sockets.

There is a yellow plug inside the external NTE box to separate the  Subscriber/OR cabling.

http://www.btplc.com/sinet/SINs/pdf/470v2p1.pdf

[#5]

My daughter's first house was built in 2010 -so she must have been (very) unlucky to have an external NTE5.

I'm surprised that BT Openreach abandoned it - must have been a nice little earner for them!