How many of you who do telephone wiring as well as power are finding problems caused by some of the cheap imported junk that's hung onto telephone lines these days?

I've had some bad experiences with the Betacom series, which is sold cheaply in the U.K. In particular, the CTT500 model is being sold in several places, and is a phone with built-in directory and caller ID display.

The first problem I found with one of these had me scratching my head for a while. I was testing another phone on the same line, and occasionally found that I couldn't release the line when hanging up. I put it down to a faulty hook switch at first, then found that the line didn't release when I disconnected the phone at the jack. Bad wiring in the house? Nope, it all checked out O.K.

Eventually, I traced it to this Betacom trash which would sometimes just seize the line for no apparent reason. I only noticed it because I happened to see the Betacom's "line in use" LED come on when it shouldn't have done.

Another apparent design problem with this model is that a momentary battery loss on the line sometimes results in it clearing long enough to drop the connection. The equipment here tends to give such a momentary loss of battery when switching to busy tone, so about half the time you dial a busy number on one of these phones you get dropped back to dial tone.

Cheap nasty junk! [Linked Image]