New BT line. BT seem to limit my options?

normanmark

infoleacher wrote: »

Because I had no idea that there was an alternative! :mad: Are you saying that I could have paid less than £125, if I wanted a phone line installed?

Yes but for only £15 cheaper for the actual phone line installation you could have been paying more for line rental & calls. Which in the long run would mean that you'd pay more than the £15 you save on the installation.

deklan99

infoleacher wrote: »

I didn't know that, thank you. However they ARE still passing the cost of setting up the infrastructure albeit at a "discounted" rate. I also gamble that on the whole they do very well out of the deal! Otherwise they would not still be there overcharging for the same product.

Ofcom estimated that the costs of USO (Universal Service Obligation) for BT were around £57-74m and the benefits were around £59-64m

Plusnet_company_representative

infoleacher wrote: »

Are you saying that I could have paid less than £125, if I wanted a phone line installed?

Yep, we do a line installation for £105 on a monthly contract.

Quentin

BT currently do it for £29.99 subject to an 18 month contract.

officegirl21

It sounds like you have signed a calls and line package with BT...and you will now be in contract with BT for at least 12mnths....while there is no way of getting around the line rental issue....you can still add carrier pre selection on the line for cheaper calls; you state you must make at least 1 call per month to fulfil the contract....add CPS from your chosen carrier and then ever month make one very short call but prefix the dial number with 1280 this will bypass the CPS carrier and take you straight back onto the BT network....this will not knock off the CPS and you therefore do not need to worry about breach of contract with them. After the 12mnths you do not need to cancel the line rental your new carrier can apply to take over the line rental for you. I hope that helps

I thought we were not allowed to advertise our wares on the forum...James at Plus Net!:rolleyes:

jhp

infoleacher wrote: »

Because I had no idea that there was an alternative! :mad: Are you saying that I could have paid less than £125, if I wanted a phone line installed?

A search of the site would have found this long informative sticky on the subject,including cheaper options,and why it cost that much in new propertys.;)
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=211879

Now that you Mum is under contract with BT,she can pay BT £70 to terminate the contract,or she could stay with BT and just pay the line rental for a year and use another supplier to provide Free/Cheaper Calls and Cheaper Broadband.
See for an example: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=958163

infoleacher

Just thought I would update this thread from our perspective.

Thanks for the constructive help people. jhp I did try a search for this sublect, but I didn't find any hits (prolly used a the wrong search string) but hey ho!

Spoke to BT after all because they screwed up the order again! (they had 3 attempts to get it right unbelievable hassle) the girl told me that the my mom would only be charged £70.00 cancellation fee because she was not on any special package, even though she is actually on unlimited Weekend Plan. I think this is because this is still considered to be the "basic" package.

So talk talk can look forward to another customer!

As a foot note, BT have been unbelievably incompetent with this order, it would require a novel to fully list the hassles I have had, including connecting next door instead of my Mom (neighbor is still connected and now receiving "free" calls) call centers where they had such strong accents that I simply could not understand and being passed to 8 thats EIGHT different people in ONE call during an attempt to sort out the confusion, which was unsuccessful anyway! Talk Talks (South African I think) helpline was fine BTW!

IMHO BT have a nerve for trying to make you feel guilty about transferring to another supplier immediatley after connecting (and bully you in to staying with a big cancellation fee) They harp on about service levels and quality of support and service, HA! My experience with BT was disgraceful. In stark contrast to my slick (albeit "electronic") experience with talk talk.

normanmark

infoleacher wrote: »

IMHO BT have a nerve for trying to make you feel guilty about transferring to another supplier immediatley after connecting (and bully you in to staying with a big cancellation fee) They harp on about service levels and quality of support and service, HA! My experience with BT was disgraceful. In stark contrast to my slick (albeit "electronic") experience with talk talk.

The cancellation fee was introduced because of customers like yourself. Talk Talk cannot be bothered to spend the money on an infrastructure so that they can install lines for customers.

What Talk Talk did was just refer people to BT to get the line activated & then told them to cancel straight away, ultimately BT couldn't sustain this form of business as they were spending more that what they was coming back. As a business model it just doesn't work.

Instead Talk Talk ask the customer to brunt the cost of the cancellation just so they can piggy back off installed lines because its cheaper for them to do it that way than to invest in the network.

If you're happy with that then fair enough, personally i wouldn't touch any provider like that with a barge pole.

spud17

flick a switch at the exchange,

The Bt engineer who earlier this week spent a morning outside my house, in pouring rain/gales, remaking a connection with about 50 tiny different coloured cables, would probably disagree!

BTW, he only had to repair one wire, but because the connectors were not the latest spec (apparently) he upgraded all the connections to try and avoid future problems.

infoleacher

normanmark wrote: »

The cancellation fee was introduced because of customers like yourself. Talk Talk cannot be bothered to spend the money on an infrastructure so that they can install lines for customers.

You haven't tackled the issue of BT's shockingly bad service and their uncompetitive pricing. Incidentally I got so hacked off with BT while trying to sort my mom's line out that I initiated a transfer to talk talk for my own phone line/broadband, so by having these silly rules & service they loses out. Incredibly the whole transfer was completed before we could get my mom's line switched on.

Furthermore, BT have had it very very good for a very very long time, it has only been recently that we even had a choice for our provisions. I call it Karma, they are reaping the rewards for YEARS of taking it's customers for granted. They weren't complaining about competition when they had the Monopoly!