France Telecom call out charge !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Manon]

During our last stay in the Auvergne there was a tremendous storm on the night of the 16th July and the next morning our phone and internet were not working. As we live in a wooded area I assumed there must be a line down somewhere and left it a day before using a neighbour's phone to report that it still wasn't working. The person I spoke to apparently tested the line, said it wasn't working and that we would need an engineer. As we were leaving the next day I have just rung to arrange an engineer only to be told that there is a charge of 149 euro ! Has anyone else had this ? We often have tremendous storms and lose power due to lines down etc and I can see this happening quite often, especially in the winter and we certainly can't pay this sort of charge every time. Any suggestions ? Oh, and she said they could test the line remotely while we were there but we would need to be on a mobile at the same time and our mobile only works intermittently at the house.

[Clair]

I am no longer with FT, but whenever I had to call to report a fault, the person at the end of the line would always warn that if the fault was found to be at my end rather than their end, there would be a call-out charge.