Moving home and reconnecting the phone

GustyGardenGalaxy

The following apparently ridiculous state of affairs has me stumped, details as follows:

I'm trying to manage my mother's house move for her.

The property that she is moving to is with BT.

My mother is currently with IDNet at her existing property (a very good company, have had no problems with them). She will be transferring the service via IDNet.

However, it seems that when the people move out of the property the phone line will be disconnected. Amazingly enough it apparently takes up to 24 hours to reconnect the phone line and 5 days to reconnect the Broadband.

This seems utterly ridiculous to me. The phone number will remain unchanged, so why the delay to reconnect?

Is it because the existing owners pay their line rental direct to BT, and my mother's line rental is with IDNet?

I cannot fathom why this takes so long - after all, surely it should just be a case of BT/IDNet amending their records from the date of the move to say that the existing customer stopped living there from such and such a date, and my mother then pays the bill from the date she moves in?

Why the disconnection?

Why the delay to reconnect?

Undoubtedly the delays are caused by BT and certainly not IDNet, but why should BT take so long over such a simple process?

Thanks

macman

That's actually very fast. It's not just flicking a switch, the work involves physical reconnections at the exchange.
BT Openreach move at their own speed, and often in mysterious ways-the relationship between them and IDNet or BT Retail is exactly the same.
Is 24 hours wait for a phone connection really too inconvenient?

GustyGardenGalaxy

macman wrote: »

That's actually very fast. It's not just flicking a switch, the work involves physical reconnections at the exchange.
BT Openreach move at their own speed, and often in mysterious ways-the relationship between them and IDNet or BT Retail is exactly the same.
Is 24 hours wait for a phone connection really too inconvenient?

24 hours of course isn't terrible, but my 'intolerance' of the fact is no doubt due to my ignorance of the process. I honesty thought that it would be a simple matter of changing account details (ie who is billed for the line).

As for waiting 5 days for Broadband to be activated - now that IS pretty bad, especially when you take into account the fact the broadband is presently enabled in the new property for the current owners.

macman

The account isn't 'changed'. The old account is closed, a final bill issued, and a new account opened in the new name.
The broadband provider presently enabled is not presumably IDNet-in which case the tie pairs may need to be moved at the exchange to connect to the new provider.
5 days after phone connection for that is not abnormal.

GustyGardenGalaxy

Okay, my bad. I guess this is all down to my ignorance of the process. I'm sure that I didn't have this problem when I moved 100 miles a few years ago, but I was using BT at each end.