Post Office broadband charging me £60 for engineer

unclepauly

Hi all,

I bought my dad broadband for xmas (normal, not fibre), its with Post Office and the activation date is today 7th Jan. They told me there would be £60 charge for a new line and engineer. Then last week they phoned me to say that the engineer will not be coming to the property any more, but they will be 'in the neighbourhood'. Well my dad says he had a landline a couple of years ago so has been disconnected for a while but the BT socket and line is still there. So it would seem to me that all Post Office have to do is activate the line again remotely - no new line needed.

Then at 4:30am today I got an email to say the broadband is now live ! Surely engineers do not work this time of the morning ? So there is no way an engineer has been 'in the neighbourhood' to do anything.

I do feel like I have been diddled and that they should not be charging me for engineer call-out and new line when they have not installed one.

Please offer your thoughts and advice as I do not want to phone up and complain if they do actually the right to charge me this.

Thank you.

Norman_Castle

So it would seem to me that all Post Office have to do is activate the line again remotely - no new line needed.

Its possible Openreach will have had to re connect the line at the line box. This won't have been done at 4.30AM, thats just an order going through the system.

onomatopoeia99

unclepauly wrote: »

So it would seem to me that all Post Office have to do is activate the line again remotely - no new line needed.

Did you go look in the cabinet to make sure the pair from your father's home is still connected? If not, on what do you base this statement?

It will be a flat fee regardless of whether it is a remote activation, the technician (you won't get an engineer for sixty quid) needs to go to the green box, or they need to go to the box and the premises.

unclepauly

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Did you go look in the cabinet to make sure the pair from your father's home is still connected? If not, on what do you base this statement?

it was based on guess work thats why i asked for advice on this forum as opposed to complaining to post office. but thank you for clarifying, i am happy to pay it then in that case.

Mister_G

Some ISPs will waive the connection charge. Obviously the PO don't!

Browntoa

My BT broadband went live at 4am , I assumed the offshore team did the final computer work hence the strange timing.

P1800S

It appears that the Post Office have charged you for having a ceased line reconnected. This is different to the reactivation of a stopped line as it involves an engineer and an Openreach charge for the ISP. A stopped line is reactivated by a robot and ISP's don't usually make a separate charge for it when you take out a contract with them. You probably could've found another ISP who would've charged you less, but considering the Post Office has been an MSE best deal for some time, you might have ended up paying more overall.

iniltous

TBH, the £60 isn’t really a engineer visit charge, it’s a charge to reactivate a ceased line, if the line can be remotely brought into service without seeing an engineer, or if lots of work including an engineer visit were needed, it would still be £60.
Work would be needed at a minimum within the exchange and possibly in the external network, if the line were stopped rather than ceased it may have attracted a smaller charge or no charge at all, and as said, some company’s absorb any charge Openreach may charge them, to get your business, obviously the PO don’t waive the fee, chances are to make their monthly fee look better than others...a company charging nothing for the install could be £5 more a month , but over 12 months , wouldn’t cost any more than the PO