Knock on the door a couple of days ago. Elderly neighbour asking if I'd report her phone out of action. Her next door neighbours all go out to work, and I'm on a week off.
What a performance, trying to do it via 100 and the automated system. Only afterwards discovered I could have done it via their website.
Anyway, thinking on, I realised an elderly lady who's a bit frail and doesn't have a mobile might feel vulnerable without a phone so I thought she might be happier with one of my DECT phones. Which proved to work ok across the road. And taking it to her she then said her phone might be faulty because of her dog.;-)
The main phone was on a shelf in the hall. The socket was hanging on the cable. Seems the dog plays with it.
By inspection, there had been originally an old standard hard wired type connection box which had been replaced by a 'new' plug in type. 'Fixed' by double sided tape on wallpaper. But the wiring had survived ok. There was no DC on the line in so definitely down to BT.
Next day, she'd obviously been rather impressed by a cordless phone, so when her daughter came across to take her out shopping she bought one at Argos. And had contacted BT who wanted 70 quid to fix their socket back on the wall. ;-) But her phone still didn't work.
So I got involved.
There were only two phone sockets both installed by BT. The line went to the front first floor bedroom with only one cable to that socket showing, and the same to the aforementioned one in the hall. Which was a master, with only two wires incoming, and none out. Didn't investigate the bedroom one. But unless I'm stupid all extensions get looped on from the master?
Offered to put an extra socket in for the new cordless base station and that was easy as she wanted it in the front room - so easy to wire via the cellar. And I decided to simply plug it in to the hall socket via an adaptor rather than hard wire it - ie make it a plug in extension, so no problems with BT if another fault arose.
So got it all done and plugged in the base station to the nearby 13 amp socket. Oh - 'that hasn't worked for years'.
Went down the cellar to switch off the ring only to discover no CU but several ancient metal clad switch fuses. And loads of crumbly rubber cable. Two meters too. Including a new digital one. With disgusting cables in and out. The riser had an obviously recent header fitted to it - probably at the same time as the new meter - with an external earth terminal. But not connected to the house circuits. One bare 3/029 earth wire went to the water main - after the stop c*ck.
I didn't investigate the faulty socket after seeing all this lot. The wiring to me is lethal. Why didn't the LEB or whatever condemn the lot when they installed the new meter and other works?