Residential Telephone Troubles

When experiencing trouble with your home telephones (no dial tone), here are a few things to try before calling the telephone company and possibly incurring a service charge.

1. Disconnect all telephones, answering machines, fax machines and computer modems from the wall outlets



2. Plug one telephone (preferably a regular old phone, not cordless) into one of the jacks and check for dial tone



3. If you get dial tone after step #2, plug the remaining devices into the wall jacks one at a time, checking for dial tone each time. When you plug a device in and you lose dial tone, that will be the faulty device.



4. If you do not get dial tone after everything is unplugged and trying a phone, you need to check at the box where the phone company brings in your service. In this box there will be another telephone jack, unplug the little cord and plug your telephone directly into this jack. If you don’t hear dial tone, there is a good chance that the phone company has a problem that needs to be looked into and that you will not be charged for a service call for them to repair.