Why do we have to pay for unanswered phone calls?

[#1]

Oops - missed that reply - apologies.
Still relevant to lizzyloos post though although she may have been better off starting a new post with her issue.

[#2]

Thanks for everyone who took time to test this issue, I have queried with BTOR whether or not a forwarded call is chargeable if it is not answered and I'll update as soon as a response is received but this will likely take a week or two.

[#3]

Quote from: Ben

I have queried with BTOR whether or not a forwarded call is chargeable if it is not answered and I'll update as soon as a response is received but this will likely take a week or two.

Have you received a response from BTOR yet or was your two week estimate a bit optimistic? 

[#4]

Quote from: alanf

In that case.... not sure if this is up to date but according to Ofcom guidance.... "Call charging starts when a call is first answered. If it is not answered, there will be no charge......" "A call is not answered, and so you do not incur any charges, if the first and only thing you hear after you have dialled the number is:     A ringing tone, or     An engaged tone, or     An �out of service� announcement, or     A number unobtainable tone,

Which is fine for a normal phone, but if it's a PBX on the other end of the line then It could be a case of the PBX picks up straight away and then plays the appropriate tones as it trys to find the extension, thus as far as BT/PN are concerned the call was answered.

[#5]

Quote from: MrT

Have you received a response from BTOR yet or was your two week estimate a bit optimistic?

No response, I've chased.
Edit: BTOR have confirmed that an un-answered forwarded call is not chargeable.

[#6]

Quote from: lizzyhoo

The only reason I noticed was I was looking into why I was paying 33p to a number 123 on 5 occasions between Dec and May, but I will post separately about that, and the only reason I noticed that was I paid £6.75 to call 118118 for 2 minutes for the first time in a very long time, well if that's how much it costs wow no wonder thaey need to advertise incesantly.

Notice you posted a wee bit ago, but the 123 has I have been told is "speaking clock".  You sound like you have the same problem I have had, and that is a faulty earth connection on your land line. I have only noticed these "123" and random calls to "11111" or "111122" etc., since I logged a fault on my line as I was unable to place calls (no dial tone) and no-one could ring me.  So I was wondering how PN can bill me for calls when I can't use the phone 

Engineer who came to fix it, ended up rewiring my connection (seems I had the very old Post Office copper wire in place) and he advised those calls would have been faulty signals due to the faulty earth. 
Whilst your phone may be fine now, these could be storing up problems for later.  Having gone over my prior months, I noticed some "123" calls earlier that I had not picked up. 
Mind you, I have not had confirmation from PN that they will be reimbursing these calls - but to be fair, they will need to wait for the engineers report I guess.
Now I just need to get my fibre IP profile reset to what it was - suspect the exchange cranked me down when he did the rewiring and disconnected the service - I did ask if I needed to shut down the service in a controlled way - answer "nah just switch it off ....." mind you he had at stage already "snipped" my cables at the junction box 

[#7]

i think that engineers are using '123' to test lines when under repair, not knowing that these calls are chargeable. I receive a report maybe every few months - as soon as I receive more regular, timely information then I can take it to Openreach.
Any calls made when a line was in fault can be refunded, upon request, as long as an engineer has confirmed that the line is physically broken / unusable (i.e. not just noisy).

[#8]

Quote from: Ben

i think that engineers are using '123' to test lines when under repair

What's wrong with 17070?

[#9]

@jelv
Quite 😕

[#10]

Quote from: Ben

BTOR have confirmed that an un-answered forwarded call is not chargeable.

I'm not sure that it's quite that 'black and white' because in my case a call being transferred by BT to a Mobile was logged and charged as answered. The called person did not answer (1.63 seconds is too short a time for that to happen) and neither did his mobile show a missed call.
I might be old but now I'm confused as well!