BT disconnection

MikePJ

I'm moving out of my house at the end of January. Currently I have my phone line and broadband (Infinity) provided by BT. When we moved into the house in June of 2012, it had stood empty for several months and BT had disconnected the phone line. We had a choice of paying a reconnection fee of £125 or taking an 18 month contract with BT for phone and broadband. We did the latter.

I rang BT this afternoon and gave them the necessary 30 days notice to terminate the broadband (our contract has now expired). I asked them to leave the voice line connected for the moment, as we don't yet have a completion date for the sale - I'd rather pay a little bit of extra line rental on the voice line until the house is sold because a) it's handy to have a line in the house b) it's a nice courtesy to the new owners that they won't be foist with the £125 reconnection charge. Anyway, BT customer services told me that this wasn't possible. I could cancel the broadband, but that would result in a new 12-month contract for the voice line. Alternatively, I could cancel both services. There was no way that they could cancel just the broadband whilst leaving a basic voice line still functioning, despite a referral to a manager. I suspect that BT are quite keen to disconnect voice lines so as to be able to charge a reconnection fee (or ensure a tie-in to their broadband service) - has anyone else had similar experiences?

Anyway, I gave up and said that I'd have both services disconnected, but I'm still really hacked off about it.

MikePJ

Oh, and their automated email now says that they can charge me £30 for disconnecting a broadband service. Neither of the advisors I spoke to mentioned that!

macman

The £30 cease charge is imposed by BT OR and usually passed on via your ISP, in this case by BT R. This has been standard practice for 4 or 5 years now and will be in your T&C's.
Nobody needs to pay the £130 reconnection charge, most providers discount this down to £40 or less.
I'm surprised that you are happy for the incoming occupiers to have unlimited access to your phone line, the financial implications of that are surely far more serious on the voice side than the broadband. They could easily clock up thousands in call charges in a few days if so minded, and you would have no comeback whatsoever-the bill would be yours.

MikePJ

macman: I was planning to call BT to close off the voice account on the day I moved out, I wasn't going to be sufficiently generous as to leave them an open tab! But I wanted to make sure that the line would remain connected for as long as possible - I certainly found 18 months ago that a number of broadband providers either weren't interested in offering me a service until I actually had a connected voice line, or wanted to charge me a hefty reconnection fee.