BT at new house - help/advice please

oligopoly

Hi all,

I moved into a new house on Wednesday. With the sellers’ permission I called BT on September 1st to place an order for BT fibre. I was told it would be activated and ready for use on the 14th – perfect as my wife and I need internet for work (as well as our sanity).

I had a voicemail from BT on Monday to say there was an issue with the line and that I should expect a call on Thursday (yesterday) for clarification. Yesterday, BT called to say they have been unable to proceed with the order as there is no active phone line at the property (I think they actually said that there has never been a working line there). The seller - who we are on good terms with - has said this is untrue – he had a BT phone line and Fibre at the house. BT said they knew of this ’issue’ on the 6th and had tried to call me to inform me (unfortunately not true).

The earliest date they can get an engineer to set up a new line is the 3rd. This delay would be extremely frustrating on its own but is made even worse by the knowledge that there is already a working phone line – plus access to the cabinet to get Fibre!

I have spoken with their Facebook team who have said, despite me confirming there is an existing line and even providing the seller’s phone (previous?) number, there is nothing further that can be done.

I’m left really annoyed and wondering if something could indeed be done to speed up the process. Has anyone had experience with asking to speak with a different department or someone higher up? Does anyone from BT frequent these boards and could help?

TIA

JJ_Egan

Needed for work then i presume its a business contract . Just contact the business team you placed your order with .

oligopoly

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Needed for work then i presume its a business contract . Just contact the business team you placed your order with .

Nope - it's a residential account. Work-wise, I'm talking checking emails/uploading Dropbox files.

notbritishgas

If you plug a phone in the socket and dial 17070 what do you get.
When did the previous owner move out.

oligopoly

notbritishgas wrote: »

If you plug a phone in the socket and dial 17070 what do you get.

I will try this tonight (in two hours)

onomatopoeia99

oligopoly wrote: »

Nope - it's a residential account. Work-wise, I'm talking checking emails/uploading Dropbox files.

If you need (your word) it for work, get a business account rather than a residential one. You probably won't get deals / cashback / prepaid master cards / shopping vouchers / bundled football matches on the telly / uncle tom cobley and all, but you might get vaguely competent people at the other end of the phone who are willing to put in the effort for you in dealing with BT wholesale when there's a problem.

AndyPK

Its so boring with ppl keep saying get a business account.


It's not very Mse.
And they are unlikely to be using the house as a place of work.

iniltous

AndyPK wrote: »

Its so boring with ppl keep saying get a business account.


It's not very Mse.
And they are unlikely to be using the house as a place of work.

I'm guessing that people give that reply when service is delayed or faulty and the complainant says they are losing business as a result, residential tariff's don't have any consequential loss provision, only the personal frustration , which is given a low monetary value from a compensation point of view , hard to argue 'I've lost £££'s of business' if you are only paying for a residential line
As far as the OP's problem, although they say the had the previous occupants permission to call BT, were BT the provider for them, and did they also contact BT to say they were leaving ?,the reason of 'no active phone line' is quite a common issue when the line has been 'unbundled' to an LLU provider like Sky or Talk Talk where there is no record of the phone number on WLR systems,
there are probably more complaints from people saying the have lost service due to premature or unrequired transfers, than people saying they moved in and service wasn't ready for them...

JJ_Egan

AndyPK wrote: »

Its so boring with ppl keep saying get a business account.


It's not very Mse.
And they are unlikely to be using the house as a place of work.

But many do use a home as a place of work .
A business account gives you service level agreements .