Bloody BT

[Mark]

There's more bad news. There's an ADSL connection charge too - though if you're lucky some ISPs will swallow that.

[Dee]

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

[Wossi]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by Wossi

Hoping O2 or Be will swallow the ADSL now, didn't know about that.

http://www.quidco.com/bethere-co-uk/



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.

[Toby]

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.

[petemc]

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]

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.

[petemc]

Offer valid until the end of June 09.

Ooh gunna be close, unless they redo it for end of July.

[Streeteh]

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.