I have a BT line which has an intermittent crackle. The noise can get so severe that it is difficult to actually hear someone on the other end of the phone. When the line is very bad my ADSL synch rate drops from 5-6Meg to ~2Meg

I have done all the BT checks, phone line straight into master socket (via ADSL filter) and tried 3 seperate phones, and tried the test socket.

BT have been round and on that occasion the line was fine although I did have to have the afternoon off work to wait for the engineer, just for him to say he couldn't find anything wrong.

He didn't even have to set foot inside my home but BT insisted I was there.

Is there a line check i could ask for that doesn't require me to be in when the engineer calls ?

If you hear noise on the line when you plug a known good corded phone into the 'hidden' socket in the master socket and select option 2 after dialing 17070, the problem's on BT's side, not in your house. Keep reporting it.

I have tried with 2 known good corded phones.
I will keep reporting it.

Many thanks

When we had a phone line which was with BT we used to suffer from the same problem, turned out that water had got into the cabling duct (underground BT wiring here, not overhead).