Help and Support

Timescale charges

Our policy

Timescale charges are raised to cover time spent by BT engineers repairing faults where this work is not covered under the terms of a service contract with BT. Timescale charges are also raised for providing or rearranging services or equipment where standard BT charges are not available.

Repair

Where a reported fault is found to be on a BT product or service which is under a service guarantee or is covered by a maintenance or rental agreement, BT will respond to repair the fault, or replace the faulty equipment, in accordance with the terms of the maintenance or rental agreement or service guarantee.

Timescale charges will apply where BT agrees to carry out work at specific times which are not covered within the terms of the maintenance or rental agreement or service guarantee and where the fault is found not to be with any BT service or equipment. In particular this covers a situation where:

• No fault is found.
• The fault is found to be on non-BT equipment.
• The fault is due to damage caused by someone at the customer's premises.
• The fault is due to theft, loss or removal of equipment.
• In the case of customer owned or rented equipment (but not BT's network), faults caused by damage by external or environmental factors (e.g. lightning, electrical surges or floods).

Provision

Timescale charges apply when you request work to be carried out on site involving the provision or rearrangement of equipment, wiring, network or services, where:

• No standard prices exist for this work.
• The work is to be carried out outside the normal working day or earlier than within our standard timescales.

Our prices

Our current prices can be found in the BT Price List.

Timescale charges frequently asked questions:

Why are you charching me to fix a fault?

BT Business will respond to a fault report from you, or your representative, and fix that fault free of charge where the fault is on the BT Network or covered by a separate contract. If we send an engineer, we will charge you when:

• The fault is not caused by fair wear and tear. For example, a cable being cut, a power surge, equipment unplugged or not being used correctly.
• The fault is caused by equipment not covered by a maintenance contract. For example, a telephone or a router.
• You, or your representative, requests a visit and no fault is found.

Why are you charging me when I did not cause the fault?

BT Business is responsible for faults caused by fair wear and tear on the BT Network or on equipment covered by a separate maintenance contract. Other faults aren't the responsibility of BT Business and we will charge for these through your normal billing system at our published rates.

Examples of such causes are:

• Cables being cut or frayed.
• Damage being caused during a break in to your premises.
• Damage being caused by fire or flood.
• Sockets being damaged.
• Sockets becoming damp due to flood, spillage or exposure to high levels of steam.
• Damage to equipment within your premises caused by lightning or power surges.

We would encourage our customers to ensure that their property insurance covers such instances.

Where you request an engineering visit despite our test and diagnostic showing no problems on the service, we will charge you if the engineer finds the service to be operating correctly.

Why is the charge so high?

Our charges are published in our price list. Our suppliers charge us for each visit, for time spent on the visit in blocks of one hour and for stores. To give you more certainty of the costs which may be incurred, BT Business charges a flat rate covering the visit, one hours work and standard stores costs. This covers 80% of the chargeable visits. The charges will be higher where:

• The engineer spends more than an hour repairing the fault, or uses substantially more stores, we will add those additional costs at our published rates.
• A higher skilled engineer has had to be used. This will generally be where the fault is on switches or data equipment. Again, we will charge at our published rates.

Why was I not told about the charge?

BT Business charges for repair work on a small number of fault reports. Therefore, we don’t advise customers on every fault report that they may be charged. However, when you report a problem we will try to determine whether a charge may be applicable or not. Where we believe a charge may be applicable we will advise you. Where there is no indication that a charge may be appropriate (for example, the problem has been caused by damage that wasn’t mentioned at the time of the report) we may not have advised you of a possible charge.

How do I get a breakdown of the charges, so that I can recover the costs?

BT Business doesn’t break down Timescale charges on your bill. The total charge is shown and a breakdown of the prices used to calculate those charges can be found in the BT Price List.

Why have you applied Timescale charges for the provision of my new line?

Timescale charges may apply for complex provision work carried out to place the Network Terminating Point (NTP) of the line at the location requested by the customer, and where such work exceeds 2 hours of engineering time. Where multiple lines are provided, 2 hours will be allowed for each line and Timescale charges will apply for any time over the total allowance.

There may be separate charges for additional infrastructure covered by Excess Construction Charges.