BT Connection Charges (merged threads)

rose28454

OldGreyFox wrote: »

If you have problems getting the £29.99 connection offer refer them to the T&C where its clearly outlined.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/dynamicmodules/pagecontentfooter/pageContentFooterPopup.jsp?pagecontentfooter_popupid=24641#CURROFF

Many thanks for the link. My son has just moved into a new flat this week and was talking to me about how much the connection charge was (£125.00). I said I will look on MSE and found this thread. I posted him the link this morning, 1 call made and £95.00 saved! Many thanks again to OP and all who contributed here.

PositiveTension

A lot of people are talking about the connection offer with a new contract - but i'm moving to a new apartment without a connection and wanted to transfer my current package.

I've still been asked for the £125 connection fee - is there anything i can do to get the line 'installed' cheaper?

dustinjames

BT told me i dont have to use them to get connected to landline.

But who else can do it?

O2 said they cant.

Heinz

dustinjames wrote: »

BT told me i dont have to use them to get connected to landline.

But who else can do it?

O2 said they cant.

O2 are lying to you. What they actually mean is it will be about £100 cheaper FOR THEM to take over a working BT line rather than instruct Openreach to do the instalaltion/reconnection work.

Any of the numerous 'line providers' now in the market can employ Openreach. O2 has joined the club of those which use the "Only BT can do that" LIE to improve their own cashflow.

dustinjames

Heinz wrote: »

O2 are lying to you. What they actually mean is it will be about £100 cheaper FOR THEM to take over a working BT line rather than instruct Openreach to do the instalaltion/reconnection work.

Any of the numerous 'line providers' now in the market can employ Openreach. O2 has joined the club of those which use the "Only BT can do that" LIE to improve their own cashflow.

thankyou

yes I know they all lie. This is so complicated and stressful.
Even my letting agent is being cold and not telling me a thing.

please see my long post on my thread "my first time buying/connecting to internet, please help"

john080480

I'm in the same boat as a lot of you here but thought I'd pass on what happened to me today.

I called Bt to instruct them to move my line over to a new address that we would be moving into in a week. They said as the property has been empty for a while a "reconnection fee" of £125 would be payable. I politely told them where to go and asked them to cancel my account. The advisor asked me to hold and went off to his cancellations department. He came back and said that they would be willing to lower the reconnection fee to £29.99 as long as I made 10 chargeable calls per month (I never got as far as finding out what BT say chargeable calls are unfortunately). He did say that I would be charged the full £125 fee but then receive it back as cashback. To be honest I didn't like the sound of this - I've had dealings with BT before... more about that later - so told him to carry on with the cancellation. He then informed me that my 12 month contract had ended last month and that I had "rolled" into a new 12 month contract and it would cost me £85 to cancel it. I baulked at this, and informed him that I had received no warning my contract was expiring and nothing to say I was entering into a new one. He said I should have received something in the post and he would look into it with the service department - he then transferred me to the customer service department in New Delhi who had no idea about what had just happened! I've got used to this tactic by these lot but I do have an ace up my sleeve!

The last time I moved house, I went through a similar problem when I moved my line over. I made a complaint over BT trying to charge me to connect my line within 2 weeks of me informing them. At first they said it took 2 weeks to do, but then said if I paid a fee they could do it quicker - I asked as a supposed valued customer how come they would charge me if they could do it anyway? I got nowhere and it went through escalation and I awaited a call from a Manager. To cut a long story short, I never got a call and spent the next 2 weeks (and over 10 hours of calls) trying to get through to the manager who was supposed to speak to me. Eventually I managed to find her through the plethora of call-centres and informed her that the reason I complained was irrelevant now as it had been over 2 weeks and my line was connected anyway. I gave her torrents of "polite" abuse about how the biggest telecoms company in Britain can be so poor at communicating between themselves and what a waste of time they are. She ended up giving me the cash for all my calls to BT (as I had no phone line I had to use my mobile which isn't free to 0800), 2 months free line rental and a credit to my account as a good will gesture. All in it cost me about £30 in calls and no phone or internet for 2 weeks - they gave me back £75 in all. My ace is that she said if I have any other problems to contact her personally, and gave me her details.

Well guess who is getting a call tomorrow!! If I have any luck, I will update this and post her details for you all to have - as far as I'm concerned screw BT... that's their attitude to us consumers

Heinz

The £29.99 offer means you get a £124.99 installation charge and a £95 credit on your first bill.

dustinjames

Heinz wrote: »

The £29.99 offer means you get a £124.99 installation charge and a £95 credit on your first bill.

long contract, and i think you hvae to make minimum amount of calls, or else you pay pay pay.

Max_Headroom_2

Hi All

Back in 2008 I was with Bulldog Broadband as where two of my mates. We decided to get rid of them as their service was getting worse and worse. For those of you who don’t know Bulldog was an LLU supplier, when you went with them they bought the line from BT (all our lines were originaly BT ones, mine had been disconnect for 2 years as I was with NTL) and it was them you paid your line rental to plus whatever the charge was for their broadband service. So I read an article about switching back to BT to use another ISP on mybulldoghell.com. It said to ring the BT customer options team and ask for a "return to donor" which I did (can’t remember the phone number). I explained to the advisor that I just want the standard line rental with nothing else as it was going to be a ADSL line only, "No problem" they said and took the line back from Bulldog in April of that year and started to bill me the £10.50 a month line rental. Both of my mates done the same thing with no issues or charges so we promptly signed up to BE broadband and have never looked back since.
Now another mate of mine is ditching his Virgin service this month to join BE. He phoned BT and was quoted the £124.99 to reconnect his existing BT line in his house which has not been damaged in anyway and does not require an engineer to visit. I haven’t seen it for myself but he tells me it’s in good order. He’s going to try the 17070 code tonight to make sure the pairs are connected at the exchange. (infact he has two BT lines as the previous owner was a BT engineer!)

Now my point is that this nonsense with reconnection charge to existing lines has been going according to this forum since at least 2006. Why then did it cost three of us sod all when we actually WERE physically disconnected from BT to an LLU suppler? BT are LYING full stop!!

(FYI I worked for this shower in retail back in 2003 and I can tell you all they were interested in was new business and answering calls. They couldnt care less about actualy fixing someones problems. My uncle works for Openreach and is in the exchanges everyday so I get access to all the inside technical info)

Regards
Joe

owen-b

Just thought I'd chip in with a complaint about BT that I'm currently on hold with them about.

I moved house in February 2010 to a property that had had BT completely disconnected. In January I arranged the free reconnection in return for 18 months contract and 10 billable calls.

In May I discovered they'd not bothered to credit me with the £125 they'd taken from my account so I called to get that sorted out. First person I spoke to didn't know what I was talking about. Her supervisor seemed to understand and offered me either a refund or a credit. I took a credit.

Today, two weeks later, I discover they've credited me £99, not the full £125, presumably because that's what the deal is now. I've called them back and as expected the first person didn't know what I was talking about. I've now been on hold for about 7 minutes waiting for his supervisor so I can go through it all YET AGAIN.

EDIT: This new supervisor claims BT have never offered this, it's not a valid offer and there's nothing he can do.

Am I imagining calling BT up in January and making this deal? Because BT's representatives in their Indian call centre are certainly implying this.