The Secret hidden facts about line rental

lwdcourt

For sometime now I have seen Martin recommend cheap deals on phone and broadband packages including line rental. It has been advocated many times to move away from BT, which always seemed like a good idea. I've tried to engage with Martin and MSE on this issue through various emails but never had a response... so this is my one last attempt to out the hidden facts nobody is telling you about!

There are clearly lots of phone and broadband deals and for the past few years these have included line rental. I went with Tiscali's offer because it saved me £1 pm and hey it's my £12 pa. It was great until two things happened... 1) a fault 2) I wanted to move. That's when the hidden facts bite....

When you have a fault with BT, you ring BT and get a BT engineer out in a day or so tops. When you move your line rental to AN other, you ring them and .... well it's seems they mostly do nothing for at least 24 hours because they "find in a large number of cases the fault fixes itself". After 24 hours they start running their office based software programs to diagnose the problem... at least another 24 hours... and so it goes. It means if you have a physical actual fault (like I did - line was cut by a farmer) it takes 3 days for an engineer to be called. I learned the provider has to pay the BT engineer and therefore does everything they can before calling BT. It means the customer suffers badly when there is a physical fault. For me that alone is worth paying £12 pa because my line is my work.. everyday without it is painful. I'm sure there are millions out there who would feel the same if they only knew and no-one's telling them!

Second problem though is even bigger. It's the sting in the tail that makes all the difference. When you move your line rental to AN other, they take over your line. They may (or may not) make changes in your local exchange but from the whole networks viewpoint your line is no longer a BT line... it's an AN other line. This makes it potentially expensive to move because most providers require you to have a BT line. As you don't a BT line most charge £125 to install a BT line. If we do the maths..... you saved £1pm and now you have to pay £125 to go to another provider. So if you've stayed with your provider for 126 months (over 10 years) you may actually save over a £1 on the deal (ignoring the minimal interest). If you stayed with your provider less than 125 months you're going to lose on the deal.... you should have stayed with BT - and got the better service to boot!

When I discovered these hidden pains I contacted Offcom to see if they were aware of them... yes they were! I asked if a provider was obliged to point out these things ... they said they weren't. I asked why didn't Offcom require them to present this information in order to protect the consumer and let them make an informed choice ... they declined to answer. Personally I think Offcom wanted to deregulate this market and had to offer the "secret" tie in sweetner to get the operators to take it on.

The bottom line is that for me (and many others) its best to pay your line rental to BT and shop around for the other stuff.

PS I don't work for BT, don't have shares in BT and don't even particularly like BT.

Heinz

BT Openreach does the repair and maintenance work and all providers have to pay them.

BT Retail does not get a free ride or any priority.

Inactive

lwdcourt wrote: »

The bottom line is that for me (and many others) its best to pay your line rental to BT and shop around for the other stuff.

.

I disagree, it is important that you use a decent alternative to BT, not some cheapskate outfit.

NeverEnough

Heinz wrote: »

BT Openreach does the repair and maintenance work and all providers have to pay them.

BT Retail does not get a free ride or any priority.

But at least BT call them in quicker than most other third party providers, meaning less of a delay to repair the line. Ie Report fault, BT engineer arrives quite quickly to repair BT line; Other providers faff about while the fault "resolves itself" (yeah, right!) or "tests" are run from their offices, before they even TELL Openreach about it, so a few days longer before anything is done. I know what the OP means and its a reason I have kept the line rental with BT.

spike7451

NeverEnough wrote: »

But at least BT call them in quicker than most other third party providers, meaning less of a delay to repair the line. Ie Report fault, BT engineer arrives quite quickly to repair BT line; Other providers faff about while the fault "resolves itself" (yeah, right!) or "tests" are run from their offices, before they even TELL Openreach about it, so a few days longer before anything is done. I know what the OP means and its a reason I have kept the line rental with BT.

Actually,that is quite wrong.When a fault is reported to an ISP,test's are ran on the line by the ISP using the BT Openreach or BT Wholesale systems.When the test's are done remotely by the BT system being used,the result determines if an engineer visit is needed & the appointment booked.
(I used to do this on a daily basis when I worked for Sky BBand)
However in a lot of cases,BT take their time in responding to a non BT fault, or a product that does not make them money,as I found out when I had 'BT Pay & Call.'
The was a fault on my line but BT said their wasn't UNTIL I decided to get BT BBand installed.
(And I am a Telecomms engineer by trade so I know a phone fault when I see one)
It has long been my belief & experience that it is BT themselves who delay work on other ISP's kit.Hell,when I reported the fault thru to BT,I was told by their agent I'd get fixed quicker if I had BT Broadband & was on a normal phone line.