Who pays BT call out fee - landlord or tenant?

[cazzabazza]

Our tenant's complaining about crackling on the landline. They have booked an engineer to come and check for a fault. If the fault is within the property there will be a £130 call out fee. Who is responsible for paying this?

Part of me thinks it should be the landlord's responsibility if the wiring/socket is faulty, however the other part of me thinks that as the landline is not considered an 'essential' service (like gas, water, electricity) then it should be the tenant's responsibility. Particularly given the line is actually working, just not as good quality as they would like.

We don't want to be unfair to our tenant, but equally don't want to pay additional charges if not strictly our responsibility.

Any thoughts?

We had to do this a couple of times in various houses and we paid it (tenants). I don't know if we had to or not, we didn't ask. I suspect that if a landline was part of the fittings when the tenant moved in then the landlord is obliged to maintain it.

I have worked in two places where there has been crackling on the line, but an intermittent fault. Both times (but it took ages and several visits though not by BT as they weren't the provider) it was equipment at the exchange that needed updating.

One thing you can do, if you have the equipment, is plug an analogue phone into the master socket. If there is no crackling then the issue is possibly with the extension or with the phones, not the line in.

When I moved into my house and we needed BT to do some work to get broadband. I (tenant) paid, wouldn't have occurred to get the landlord to pay it.
But then I have bought a new cooker, re fenced, rewired (proper tradesman) plumbed, plastered and tiled my rented property without asking for a penny off the landlord.

I think if it is equipment then definitely the tenants, however anything structural would be your responsibility.

To answer your question though, I think it's the tensnt's cost. I've also had an issue with interference on the line which was fixed by plugging the base unit of a set of cordless phones into a different socket in the house (upstairs).

Er...Damnautocorrect, why? That is a lot if investment in someone else's property. Do you have some sort of secure tenancy?

What does your lease say about provision and repair of Service Media?

As a tenant we paid it - just be warned it is a £130 call out charge then they add an extra for the time they are there. We had an engineer come out and ended up wit ha £95 bill for a call out, 20 minute visit and 2m of cable he replaced.

If it was part of the itinerary it should have been in good working order and the LL should be responsible, I'm guessing.
If the tenant had the line installed or was not connected before they moved in then my guess would be tenant.

It is probably academic as it is most likely BT's fault - or in reality the squirrels that had been chewing the line at the top of BT's telegraph pole (#stillnotmyfault).

It will probably depend on your contractual arrangements. If landlord advertises as all facilities - phone line, broadband etc included in rent then landlord liability. If not then tenant liability.

i think this is for the tenents to sort out.

it is very rarely a fault in the property, but you have to get past the Indian call centre to get it sorted.

easy solution though; arrange with the tenant to go round first with a spare phone and do some testing. Also make sure no-one has mucked about with the BT socket in the house.

but if the external cable hasn't been replaced recently, that's what it will be and BT won't charge for that.

if by any chance it is internal, and not due to the tenant damaging something, then I think (as a landlord) it is for the landlord to pay. Sorry. But that does mean the landlord should make sure they don't get ripped off.

Ignore the "BT" bit and think of it as any other thing in the house.

If a light switch didn't work, or the roof leaked, who would pay?

Yes to the tenant unplugging all phones and extensions and testing a plain working phone in the master socket. That's more or less what BT will do. If the master socket works OK, it is not their equipment at fault and they will charge. It may well be a DIY extension or a faulty phone. In which case the person who supplied the faulty item is responsible.

But the phone isn't an essential service.

As a landlord I have never involved myself in the tenants' communication preferences.

There may well be phone sockets in the house, but that is entirely between the tenants & BT.

...but if the property was viewed and marketed with a phone line (activated or not) then it has to be kept that way.

If the phone sockets don't work, that needs to be advised to prospective tenants.

whether they want to pay for a phone line is their choice; they can cancel if they don't.

All of this postulating is useless. The landlord and tenant relationship is governed by what the lease says about service media, and whether or not it is the landlord's responsible to keep things in repair or merely put them there at the start of the term. There is no way you can answer this without looking at the lease and any arguing over what is fixed or what should be reinstated is pointless. I'm a lawyer - OP, read your lease.

I dug my lease out last night and it doesn't say anything about the phone line - obviously doesn't mean yours does or doesn't though.

If it was me I would cover the BT call out fee and claim it back of the tenant if it turns out to be damage to the inside or phones.

Dam autocorrect can you come and be my tenant!

I would be pragmatic. Are they good tenants? Do you want to keep them? Will you need their good will somewhere down the line?

I am a landlord and I would expect to fix anything structural in my property. Including the phone line. There are lots of things that aren't essential but if you get pedantic over it the tenants can make life really tricky.

Plus, it's just nice to be nice. £130 is not a huge amount of money if you are properly budgeting for potential maintenance costs as a landlord.

it is the tenants responsibility unless the problem is eg damp, structural, in which case it would come down to the landlord.

I agree with Doris, that its good to be pragmatic and pay more than what you legally have to but there are times when you have to be gently assertive. A landline that crackles is working.

There is no legal requirement to improve it as its not fundermental like gas, electricity or water to living in a property. In your situation I would go and viist and see how bad the crackling is. It may well be that the tenant needs to by themselves a new phone and there is nothing wrong with the line. A cheaper alternative might be for the tenant to change to virgin media for phone calls.

Our tenants all use mobile phones and I don't think I had a tenant with a landline for ten years.