BT want £1650 to provide Landlane

crazy.days

I have recently moved house, still in the same village and asked BT to cease my landline in my old house and provide a new line in the new place. Having had to wait for a visit by an engineer, finally they tell me that the cost to provide a new landline in a chalet just 200 yds away from my old house. The BT junction box is 50 paces from my the new address. Not only that, they cannot connect me until the 28 September meaning that I will have had no landline for 9 weeks since they discounted the old address. They arranged to cease the phone in the old address on 27 July and reconnect me at the new property on Aug 1. They discounted the old address on the 20 July, a week earlier than I asked for and now want this extortionate amount to reconnect me.

How can this be when the original price quoted was £130. Open Reach have to be the most useless, badly organised company in Britain.

Is there any other company that I can use to provide a new telephone line? Or do I complain to about the cost of providing this new line?

Many thanks.

brewerdave

Presumably the cost is because the house does not actually have a line at all currently, so the cost is for a new overhead cable to be supplied (or new cable to be drawn thru ducting). £130 is the "standard" BT charge which applies even if its just a couple of connections to make in the exchange.
Suspect that any of the other suppliers with cheap connection offers eg Plusnet,the Post Office will tell you that they cannot supply a line at all once they "talk" to BT Openreach who do all the engineering work anyway!!

System

The £130 should apply even if a new line is required after an engineers visit. The only time that they should charge more is if it is a difficult instal E.G. rural and having to lay in a km of new cable,

Go back to them and get an explanation of why they are charging this much. Maybe thare are no spare lines left at the junction box and a new cable needs to be run to it?

macman

How would the cable have to be run those 50 pace? Overground cable or underground ducting?

money_saving_matt

Openreach charge the service provider (in this case BT Retail) £50.44 for a new single analogue line, where the supply of that line does not require any of the following:

Internal trunking & traywork; breaking through walls; additional poles, ducts and cables; radio charges and miscellaneous non-standard or specially requested items.

This information comes directly from the Openreach price list here.

If any of the above are required then these are classified as Excess Construction Charges, the pricing of which can be found here.

The important thing to note is the exemptions at the bottom, which specify that for the first line at a property "the first £3400.00 of charges will not be raised against the first narrowband voice service provided at a site."

What this means is that if the cost of provision is less than £3400, Openreach should charge the service provider the standard install fee (£50.44). If it is more than £3400, Openreach should charge the SP the difference plus the standard install charge. For example, if the engineer(s) determine that it will cost £5000 to provide the line, the cost to your SP would be (£5000 - £3400) + £50.44, which is £1650.44. Obviously the SP would probably add margin to this.

The fact that you've been quoted £1650 means either (a) Openreach have not applied the "first line exemption" or (b) the actual cost of install is over £3400, and the £1650 represents the difference plus any margin BT Retail have added on top.

If you were to go to any other supplier (eg Plusnet) you would likely face the same (or similar) charges, as they have ultimately come from Openreach. If I were you I would contact BT Retail and ask whether the first-line exemption has been applied.

iniltous

As already stated you are probably being charged excess construction costs, although BT have a universal service obligation, they are the only provider that has to provide a line when requested, ask Virgin to provide a cable line in a non cable area, they will tell you to go away, but this USO is not at any cost, and what you have been quoted is a lot less than the actual cost to BT of the install, if you want to, you could ask BT to provide you with an armoured cable, that you, or a contractor employed by you, dig in, from your property, to the boundary of your land, as close as possible to BT's existing line plant, this could reduce the excess costs, BT would tell you the depth of cover required on the cable etc and when the cable is 'in' they arrange to connect it into the network