phonexpat

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Anyone use this service? Have been having problems with my landline for a few months. Everytime someone phones the livebox goes offline for 2 hours and the phone line is dead. Person calling only gets an engaged tone. Eventually it comes back and everything is fine again until the next person phones (which thankfully isn't too often). This weekend the line went totally dead (and still is) and I cannot make or receive calls at all, but I am still connected to the net.

Finally got round to phoning FT today to try and sort the problem out. They say my line is fine, and it is the carriers problem. Have emailed phonexpat and am awaiting a response. In the meantime just wondering if anyone else has been having this problem.

I have tried the normal stuff, trying another phone, cables, taking livebox out of the circuit etc, etc etc.

[Bob T]

I have been using Phonexpat for nearly 3 years now with no problem at all. I would suggest that it may be your livebox causing the problem, most people have problems with that bit of equipment and you will find many threads about it on this forum.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

We've had the livebox nearly 2 years now, with very few problems so find it bizaar that it would suddenly be that that's causing it. I also disconnected the livebox all day today and the line is still dead.

Was wondering if phonexpat had gone bust which was my other reason for posting, but seeing as you've had no problems with them, obviously this is not the case.

Wonder if we've paid our bill....

[Jonzjob]

We also use Phonexpat and have done so for almost 3 years with no problems. Have you tried contacting them to see if they know anything about your problem? We have had several calls through today, no problems, apart from an old lady on a mobile who keeps calling, getting confused and ringing off, bless her. She sounds quite confused.

I don't see any reason why an incoming call should give you any problems if it was a problem with Phonexpat. They only provide a service for your outgoing calls and as far as an incoming call is concerned I would have thought that it would just come through the normal FT channels. I may of course be wrong? You still have the same phone number with no added code?

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Tried contacting them today. No reply.

And normally we receive our bills monthly via email and these are paid automatically from our bank. We haven't received one since April.

Something strange is going on.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Well, finally found the problem. After hours of being shunted from one place to another with no one taking responsibility for the problem, we decided to fault find ourselves.

Eventually we discovered we had a short in our line between our phone point and where the line comes in. So we swapped a couple of unused cables over and now have a working phone line again and a very speedy uninterupted internet connection back again.

Thank you FT for telling us there was no fault in our line (when clearly there was). We know where not to go next time we have a problem.

As a side note, something strange did occur with phonexpat. We hadn't received a bill from them since March and yet since then we have made numerous calls to Australia (when the line permitted). Phonexpat haven't charged us, and we received a bill from FT just for our line rental yesterday for that period and they haven't charged us for them either! Wonder where those calls disappeared to?

[Rob Roy]

Have you recommended Phonexpat to anyone else and they have signed up with them? You would have qualified for free calls for x number of minutes if so. We had loads for free calls last year after 2 different friends signed up with them quoting our phone number.  

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

No, we hadn't. In fact FT told us they removed phoneexpat as our carrier from the beginning of April (why, even they couldn't answer). Truely bizzar. Oh well, we're just looking at it as compensation as everybody refused to help us.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Ok, the lines gone again. Got a short on these two wires now.

Obviously I'll need to replace the whole cable, but for now, I've got a very long length of speaker cable. I know telephone lines run on low dc voltage like speaker cables do, anyone know if I can just use speaker cable so I have a phone until I get round to buying some proper phone cable?

PS We got billed via phoneexpat after all for those missing calls. Oh well.

[Panda]

Hello

When you are back fully functioning, if you've got a livebox could you not cut out expat and just use the 7 euro's a month international calls option?  We use this with a phone connected to the live box you get inclusive unlimted calls in France and for 7 euro's extra a month you get international calls unlimited too.  FT is not the cheapest for this, I believe you can save a couple of euro's with neuf or one of the others but if you are in a FT contract already you could upgrade ot this service.

Just a thought.

Panda

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

I've not heard of that. We have unlimited free calls in France, but not unlimited international calls. Have to look into that. Could save me 7 euros a month. Thanks for that.

[David Taylor]

I have been with Expat for almost 2 years with out any problems - I know use internetcalls.com where I pay 5 cents for each connection - dialled thru the computer with the call length unlimited to most countries , these calls are not routed thru expat so no charge , so my bills from them have reduced to quarterly rather than monthly.

[Pierre ZFP]

Loudspeaker cable is not a good idea if its the normal stranded type.  You will get unbelieveable crackaling on the line.  You should use solid core phone cable or even better, CAT5 network cable.