View Full Version : Bloody BT
Seeing as I pick up the keys to the new house on Friday I figured I'd get in touch with BT about getting a phone line sorted as the area isn't cabled for Virgin. Had a gander at the BT website regarding connection fees and noticed this little gem:
Please note that some properties, for example new property developments, may have a white BT socket installed that hasn't been connected (ie no dialling tone). In this case the standard connection charge will still apply.
Arse biscuits, that's £122.50 to find from somewhere then :angry:
Not exactly fair when you think about it, we have 2 choices really, pay the £122.50 to get a phone line and thus the internet. Don't pay it and get no phone line or internet :( Surely they can't get away with this?
You reckon there's any chance I can get them to waive the fee or not?
TinkerBell
22-06-2009, 16:28
At the end of the day you are buying a service to have a line installed to your house. Have you considered how much it costs BT to get an engineer out to fit that cable to your house, the cost of the materials, the wage for the engineer, the tools for the engineer.
Ofcom have decided how much telecommunications providers have to charge end user's to make it fair for all the different providers.
Why should you be let off paying for a line? Would someone come and fit a floor for you and not charge you anything for the materials, the labour, the time, or the tools? I think not.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=14539193&postcount=1005
That might be useful.
As Tinkerbell says, the actual fee isn't all that much when you think about what BT do that they don't explicitly charge for, material costs can be huge and they pretty much maintain the network for free after it's installed.
You're paying a fee for a service, same as anything else.
Only time I don't agree is when they try and charge customers who physically enabled, just need to be turned on at the exchange.
I think the problem is that phones are seen as something we all just have as standard and so think that we shouldn't be paying for them to be set up.
Personally, I don't have a problem paying for the connection charge as I'm sure most companies would charge it.
I don't see the problem. If I want a service I have to pay for it - why should a phone line be any different?
Ultimately BT own most of the copper network if not all? (Tink?) That aside why wouldn't you have to pay to get the line fitted to your property? I think you seem to expect to have a line fitted FOC? Or did I get that wrong :p The only alternative is cable services - are there others except for Virgin you can try if you don't want to go with BT?
TinkerBell
22-06-2009, 16:53
Yup BT own the copper network.
Yup BT own the copper network.
Like OCP own the Police in Robocop? :shocked:
TinkerBell
22-06-2009, 17:10
OCP? Robocop? Lol I would assume yes. But since I don't know what you are on about then don't take my word for it :p
OCP? Robocop? Lol I would assume yes. But since I don't know what you are on about then don't take my word for it :p
Go to Blockbuster, tonight. :facepalm:
There's more bad news. There's an ADSL connection charge too - though if you're lucky some ISPs will swallow that.
Dont get me started on BT, bloody shocking what me and Daz went through.
We ended up having 2 bottles of wine from them to apologise for their cock ups ;D
From what I can gather everything is installed it just needs switching on, that's why I was moaning about paying the charge. If they have to send someone out to actually fit a new line, then I can understand paying it.
The problem is, this will be the first time I've ever had to do something like this, so have no idea on what is what. Might have a word with the site manager on Friday to see if the line is connected up just not switched on.
Hoping O2 or Be will swallow the ADSL now, didn't know about that.
TinkerBell
22-06-2009, 17:49
Yes the work has been done, but that work was done on the behalf of the people who will be living in those houses. So the work still needs to be payed for by the occupants. The materials, the time, the labour has still all been used to get that line to your premises.
It just means that you won't be waiting as long for the service to get to you.
The line can't simply be "switched on" an engineer has to connect the line in the exchange at the bare minimum.
Streeteh
22-06-2009, 17:56
Hoping O2 or Be will swallow the ADSL now, didn't know about that.
http://www.quidco.com/bethere-co-uk/
:D
Basically if you use that link when you sign up to the Be service you get shed loads of cashback. I ended up getting £80 which not only swallowed the connection fee but also covered a couple of the first months fees.
[EDIT] Here's another slightly less generous cashback offer from O2:
http://www.quidco.com/o2-home-broadband/
I dislike BT immensely as they tried several times to charge me the fee you're paying, but the charge was in error as it was actually a problem at their end (which i had to figure out for myself). Sadly as has been said they do have to cover costs so you will probably just have to bite the bullet.
Don't get me started on BT. In my last house, when ADSL first arrived, they wanted £100 just to remove the ISDN line and then over £150 to put ADSL in, with no guarantee it would work at all and no path back to ISDN should it fail. I didn't have too much of an issue with the ADSL charge but £100 to revert back to a basic analogue PSTN line was outrageous, especially as, had the ADSL installation failed, I'd have been expected to pay to have the ISDN line restored!
I waited until I moved house and took great pleasure in telling them where to shove it.
As for the copper network or "local loop", yes BT do own it but this is the big problem with our infrastructure. This network was paid for with public money when BT was a nationalised business and effectively given to them for free when they were privatised. They should have spun off an entirely separate company to own, maintain and manage the local loop, possibly still owned by the government as a nationalised business. That way the investment in things like fibre could have been justified long ago with public money rather than leaving it to BT to decide when the business case justified it.
I've got the same thing going on with my new place. Its been here for 4 years and my pad has 2 sockets in but apparently the line is disconnected so its £125 to plug it back in. This isn't happenning till next Tuesday afternoon. I'm hoping the Be or o2 offers are still available then. Its still a wait for adsl to be installed after that. Another 2 weeks?
Streeteh
23-06-2009, 00:25
If it's any help, the Be offer on quidco has been there for nearly a year, so that should most likely be available when you finally get going. It took around 14 days for my ADSL connection to go live after i had signed up. Annoyingly the modem/router arrives really quickly so it just sits there mocking you.
Offer valid until the end of June 09.
Ooh gunna be close, unless they redo it for end of July.
Streeteh
23-06-2009, 00:29
Iirc they said valid till the end of June 08 when i signed up, i think it's just there so they can bail out if necessary.
[EDIT] Oh wait, the valid till bit only applies to the amazon voucher, i didn't get one of those so i guess that does expire.
I think BT do a pretty good job when you consider just how many people they serve. I've had problems with them yeah, I've had the obligatory bottle of wine sent out to apologise but generally, as the UKs prefferred supplier of phone lines, they're bound to have a percentage of people who are affected by problems - and as most of these will occur when people move or want a new service installing, this will happen to most people at some point.
It is frustrating, but when i was little, a house phone was a luxury, never mind broadband, internet connection, all that malarky. We only had one because the hospital paid for it because my mum worked on-call and we were the only people in our street that had one. Now just because it's an everyday right people expect to have it installed, connected ,switched on, for free. Back then, if you didn't pay the connection fee, you didn't have one, simple as that.
I think in part its because its so behind the scenes. Paying £100+ for a Sky+ box is fine. £100 for a nice new 1tb hd or something is fine. But this just seems like you're paying £125 for a switch to be flicked. Oh and I'm not using the phone line... to make phone calls. Which again feels odd. Happy to pay for ADSL but I guess it just feels like I'm paying for something so trivial that I won't use, even though I'll be using it like 24/7. Its all that perception milarky coupled with "Aw what? But I just spent loads on..." :)
Davey_Pitch
24-06-2009, 10:57
I dislike BT with a passion currently. When we moved into our new place we had the connection fee added to our monthly bill so we didn't have to pay it all in one go. However, instead of reverting us back to just our line rental after 3 months, they "forgot" to do so causing us to be overcharged for 3 months. When I noticed, I rang them up and they said sorry, we'll refund you the difference right away, which they did. A couple of months later and our bill goes up inexplicably. I ring them up again to find out the problem. Apparently they refunded us too much and instead of contacting us and telling us their mistake, they simply decided to increase our bill without telling us. When they tried to explain it initially, they couldn't explain why our bill had gone up. In the end I had to sit down with a pad and pen and work out exactly what we should have paid, what we had paid, and what we were refunded. Only then did it actually make sense because the people on the phone couldn't explain it to me.
One more screw up from them and we're off somewhere else I think. It's a phone line we only pay rental on (we pay Sky for our phone calls), it's not hard to get our billing right surely?!
Erp. That's what I chose to do too. I'll be watching them closely.
Streeteh
24-06-2009, 11:05
One more screw up from them and we're off somewhere else I think.
I was under the impression that most/all ADSL providers required a BT landline?
I was under the impression that most/all ADSL providers required a BT landline?
I think with the exception of Karoo/Kingston in Hull that's the case. The copper tail itself is BT owned but the DSLAM in the exchange that the ADSL goes through could be owned by another company.
Davey_Pitch
24-06-2009, 11:08
I was under the impression that most/all ADSL providers required a BT landline?
They do, but Sky have offered to take over the whole thing (line rental) so we'd only have to deal with them, not BT. The service provided isn't an issue at all, merely the customer service.
Talktalk do an install for £65 but I think you're then stuck with them for broadband.
Streeteh
24-06-2009, 11:20
Talktalk do an install for £65 but I think you're then stuck with them for broadband.
You are indeed, that's how they recoup the cost (as they're basically just paying BT for you)
Never ever go near TalkTalk. Ever.
I'll probably be looking at moving away from BT at some point soon - our monthly bill is £11 line rental and maybe £1-£2 calls. No problem with them as a company (yet).
Saw that but decided not to use it. Looked odd.
Might be a bit late for wossi and Pete... but if you can cancel and then reapply or even call up and tell them this and see what happens:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/free-BT-line-installation
Never got round to phoning BT anyway due to work. So all this means that I *have* to stick with BT as my telephone supplier for 18 months but can go elsewhere for my internet? If so then I'll be giving them a ring today.
EDIT: All sorted now, just waiting for the engineer to call me with my new number and a date he'll be round to connect me up :D Then I can get the net sorted, will definately be going through Be* after I find out how fast it'll be. :D
Also IIRC it's down to the engineer on the day too.
When we moved into this house, BT said "There hasn't been a line connected in that property for 15 years".
Engineer came out, had to put a completely new line in from the pole.
Plied him with copious amounts of PG Tips, witty banter and fancy hob nobs. Didn't get charged :D
TinkerBell
27-06-2009, 10:55
It doesn't matter about who the engineer is, the engineer wouldn't have had the deciding factor in if you get charged for a line being provided. For a new dropwire the engineer wouldn't say anything about a charge, if it was a repair of a line and the problem was within the premises then the engineer would tell the service provider what the problem was and they decide from that. It is upto the Service Provider.
Damn, thats my hobnobs wasted on misinformation then.
Wonder why I didn't get charged then?
oops
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/telecoms/5684477/BT-named-worst-customer-service-provider.html
WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE
1. BT 2. British Gas 3. Sky 4. Virgin Media 5. Carphone Warehouse 6. Vodafone 7. HSBC 8. AOL 9. Barclays 10. O2
Carphone Warehouse were only 5th? :shocked: I'm shocked and disappointed :p
Briggykins
29-06-2009, 16:54
Hmm, surprised at HSBC - I've always found them to be excellent in branch and on the phone, tho I understand First Direct is a different story.
Can we put 3 on there as well? Just awful.
First Direct were nothing but superb, compared to HSBC who were dreadful and are useless and unhelpful in branch. Guess it all comes down to personal experience!
First Direct were nothing but superb
This.
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