Broadband issue when moving home

richt99

I am expecting my completion date to be 29th November.

Currently i have Sky for TV, phone & broadband. I've contacted Sky today about the move & they said although they can get an engineer for the TV to come on the 30th Nov, for the broadband a BT open reach engineer has to visit & there isn't one available till 4th January. Not totally sure why this engineer has to attend, the sellers currently have phone & broadband with TalkTalk.

I really can't wait 6 weeks for my broadband as I often have to work at home, so I'm wondering what my options are ?

I'm thinking maybe i should change Broadband provider, if i changed to TalkTalk would it be quicker ? being as current householder has them & of course providing TalkTalk's broadband package is acceptable to me.

Or would it be better to arrange some temporary broadband for 6 weeks via a dongle ? - what are the costs for this option ? - my main concern is would the connection be reliable using this method.

QBSBuck

Have you checked the BB available in your new home?

I have Sky BB, Talk and TV. Contracted until Jan 12th. I have broken my Sky BB and Talk contract as they have a clause which allows this due to price hikes of more than 10%.

TV is self install when I get there, so i can see out my contract no problem.

As for BB, Sky Unlimited is unavailable as LLU has not occurred on my new exchange. Sky Connect is just BT TotalBroadband rebranded.

I will be contacting BT to get a good deal (they literally are my only option).

Funny thing about SKY Talk is my incoming buyer is porting my number. I was greeted by a letter stating my service would end 26th Nov. I move on the 23rd!! Phoned them and they cannot stop it. In other words SKY have allowed an unsolicited transfer of my service. My buyers can technically run up phone charges on my account lol. They added a note to confirm I will be moving out.
Good luck with yours. Nothing to help in my reply, just a comrade in arms.

giraffe69

When we moved Sky were very efficient and sorted out the TV on the day after we moved. The telephone (with new number) from BT worked on Day 1 but we had to wait 6 days for BT Broadband. No idea why it has to take that long (in practice it came on a day earlier than they said) and no engineer was needed to visit. The exchange is next door to where we live and no doubt someone from Openreach had to press a switch.

cwcw

You could buy an unlocked USB dongle off eBay for under £10, then order yourself a SIM card from giffgaff and buy a 3GB gigabag for £12.50, prepaid. to use within 1 month. Probably £20 ish all in for one month's access. Once the dongle is bought, any further months are cheaper.

I've done it before and the connection was reliable and quite fast (6mbps) but use O2's coverage checker for 3G. Also, giffgaff uses image compression over 3G so the 3GB goes further than normal, although you may notice poorer quality images. Advantage of pre-paid is it avoids a further credit check too, which you would not want mid mortgage application.

cwcw

giraffe69 wrote: »

When we moved Sky were very efficient and sorted out the TV on the day after we moved. The telephone (with new number) from BT worked on Day 1 but we had to wait 6 days for BT Broadband. No idea why it has to take that long (in practice it came on a day earlier than they said) and no engineer was needed to visit. The exchange is next door to where we live and no doubt someone from Openreach had to press a switch.

We had a similar thing, with the hold up mainly down to BT Openreach needing to do a visit, and then in reality once their deadline came they didn't need to visit and enabled it remotely anyway. Although they're meant to be independent I suspect had it been BT broadband rather than Sky, it would have got done quicker and not to the boundaries of the maximum time allowed.

jbainbridge

I'll count myself lucky ... Had to wait 2 weeks for Openreach to sort out our new TalkTalk line. 6 weeks is ridiculous!

johnmcga

Welcome to the crazy world of Openreach and moving house. This has happened to me twice in the last year - I believe it's because ADSL broadband providers all rely on Openreach engineers, and their time tends to be booked up.

It's incredibly irritating and makes a joke of 'broadband Britain', if you ask me. The lesson I've learned is to book in your broadband move as soon as you think you have a move date agreed. You can always cancel it if you change plans.

lfc321

Our phone line was connected yesterday, 5.5 weeks after we ordered it. Still waiting for the broadband to go live, though.

A real nuisance, but not sure there's much you can do. We've been using a dongle.

Not sure whether sticking with talk talk would make a difference for you or not.

geek1981

If you have unlimited data on your smartphone, you can tether by activating wifi hotspot. If you are in a 3G area you get good speeds ( i get 3-4mb down where i live).

skintandscared_2

We moved house 3 weeks ago and despite ringing BT 3 weeks before the move, we've only just had our phone and broadband connected. We were told that whoever we decided to go with as our provider, it's the same engineers who come and do the lines so the wait would be the same. We have used a dongle for the last couple of weeks and now fully appreciate the low relative cost of an unlimited broadband package!