Engineer visit - potential £60 charge.

[#1]

Credit to PN, they are sending an engineer round to investigate my connection.  Slightly concerned about the threat of a £60 charge “….if an engineer visits your premises and the fault is found to be caused by your equipment, internal wiring or as a result of damage to BT equipment...”.  Has anyone experience of this.  The only thing I have connected is a my router.  The BT modem and cable to the phone socket outlet are as installed about a year ago.  Obviously, if someone damaged the kit (or through modification altered its operation) then I understand the charge, but not otherwise.

[#2]

Unfortunately that's the way BT work these days and has been for several years now (PN have no choice in the matter). As long as things are as you describe there should be no charge.

[#3]

If you've followed Plusnet's instructions when reporting the fault these should have eliminated problems internal to your premises. That means the fault is external so no charge.
Even so Plusnet have to warn you about the potential charge, What some customers say they've done might not correspond to reality.

[#4]

Be careful with the wording though as the t&c's also state that if no fault is found there may be a charge!! A potential lose/ lose there!!
Mark

[#5]

Quote from: spraxyt

What some customers say they've done might not correspond to reality.

In my experience dealing with such things there is no "might" about it 

[#6]

@OP
I see that you've got an engineer booked in for tomorrow. Are you ok to let us know how you get on?

[#7]

@MattyC  Yes of course.  Do you mean let you know whether it re-establishes my previous 77Mbps sync speed or whether I get stung for £60?  🙂
(I sincerely hope the probability of the latter is zero.).

[#8]

Either!
In honesty, the latter is treated subjectively. It's not a case of "computer says charge so we charge".
Matty

[#9]

I have had several vists over recent years from Openreach and I was never charged even for a line dropping sync speed.  I think you would have to be a complete numpty to have it applied, any time I have heard being charged has been when they havent used a filter or not plugged the wire in the correct port (believe me when FTTC was launched by Openreach those 5-7 years ago, that happened a lot).  Most of the users that seem to frequent these pages are tech savvy, and you appear to be also.  In a nutshell charge is unlikely.

[#10]

Quote from: MattyC

I see that you've got an engineer booked in for tomorrow. Are you ok to let us know how you get on?

The BT Openreach engineer turned up on time today.  A very competent and pleasant BT employee who spent time testing and sorting problems.  He changed the phone point from a Mk2 to a Mk3, replaced the ECI modem with another ECI modem and rewired the modem to the MK3 point.  Various tests proved that the physical wiring to the BT cabinet is sound and that given the proximity of my house to the cabinet I should easily get 80Mbps – and potentially much closer to the 130Mbps being 'pushed-out'.
After the initial wiring changes and testing, the attempt to reset the profile to 80/20 failed.  This turned out to be a fault on the fibre port I was connected to, limiting sync speed to around 70Mbps.  Following some interaction between the BT engineer and 'Leeds' I was told I have been put on a new port and my profile changed to 80/20.  (BTW the faulty fibre port was only pushing out 105Mbps on the engineers test rig.).
A quick speed test indicates however that the speeds are exactly the same as before – 65Mbps etc.  The estimated 'current line speed' on the PN web page is also still showing 69.4 Mb, but perhaps this is not a live reading.  I was assured that a) 80/20 is definitely being 'provided' to the ECI modem b) the wiring and proximity of my house to the cabinet means I should easily get 80/20 but c) it will take a while for the speed to increase – something to do with DSLAM and RAS.  
Would PN confirm (c) please.
(No mention of a charge, so I assume there will be none.).

[#11]

From the sound of the visit the engineer was quite thorough, as it was a fault on the port I can't see that any charge would be passed on.
Looking at this we just need to match our profile to the new connection speed on your line and you should be able see the better speeds coming through. Give me 2 minutes, then log in to your router and do a single disconnect/reconnect.

[#12]

Thanks!
I seem to be back to where I was before 01 April: 72Mbps ish download, 18 upload and ~20msec ping.