That is my point tom. The power surge must have come down the telephone line, therefore it eminated within the BT network. Engineer charges are only applicable when your own equipment. ie telephone is faulty but the line is good. My equipment was perfectly fine until the surge down the BT line. This damaged the phone and router, they were not faulty until after the surge. I am not really convinced this call out charge is down to me in this case.

Cheers Concrete

Just as you can choose whether or not to fit surge protection to your electrical appliances, you can fit surge protection to your phone line

You fail to do so, your fault. Nobody else's. I suggest you either foot the bill yourself, or else make a claim on your household contents policy.

I am unaware there is a regular problem with power suges down the telephone line. If this is a regular occurance should not BT at least advise some sort of protection? I have a filter on one socket for internet use, but that is it. I have been through my contract with BT, word by word and no mention of surge protection anywhere. Not one. I don't mind footing the bill if it can be shown I neglected some reasonable care provision. However the fact remains that the surge came down a BT line from their network and damaged my telephone and their router. Without the benefit of advice from BT about possible power surges, exactly how do I fail in my duty to take reasonable care?

My neighbour, who is an IT boffin made a cogent observation. He switched on the damaged router and it turns on, cycles and then settles down with the blue light on as if ready for operation. However if an attempt to connect to the internet is made the light turns orange and a malfunction symbol appears. This proves the router was damaged through the telephone line and not the power circuits.

I simply don't see how BT can expect to charge for an engineer visit given their own terms and conditions. These clearly state that if any equipment owned by me is faulty then the visit is chargeable. My telephone was not faulty nor was the BT router until the power surge. The router is BT equipment and they did not see fit to install any sort of power surge protection on their own equipment. QED.

Concrete

Isn't a lightning strike the sort of random thing that we pay insurance for.

A few years ago we had no surge protection, i hadn't ever thought about it, lightning strike close by caused lots of electrical damage, and we lost about £2000 worth of electrical equipment, which the insurer covered without any issues, by the time i contacted the local NFU office they already knew all about it, our claim was minor compared to a business down the road which took the main strike.

What was interesting was Sony and Panasonic items were unaffected, other makes were rendered useless.

I have been aware of the possibilty of damage to telephone equipment from lightning for some time now - not that I have done anything about it.

I thought it was also possible for lightning to damage TV equipment if connected to a roof aerial. No idea if surge protection is available for that.

Edited by FP on 07/06/2018 at 17:11

A simple google search for 'phone socket surge protection' will give you all the information you need.

Absolutely any metal cable can be a lightning conductor. Your TV aerial. A Sky box. Overhead electric lines. A phone line.

You don't get advised about surge protecting your TV from the aerial or sky box being hit by lightning, same as you don't get advised the same for your phone equipment. Mainly because the likelyhood of such a strike is minimal.

Do you have a lightning rod on your house, like large commercial buildings do ? Or, like 99.9% of UK residences, do you just insure against the risk and leave it at that ?

A son was hit with lightning strike - took out Sky completely, phones, wifi, cabling to sky box & LNB.

Sky replaced LNB, all cables, Sky box etc - wifi box was with BT but we just used an old box in the interim & he swapped to Sky for BB. The indifferent service from BT, a price rise made him change.

Not so lucky was this chap:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-444271...6

House will be demolished in owners opinion - fire engufed the roof & the fire brigade drown the house with water - wooden farmed building with a brick skin are very vulnerable to fires & water damage.