BT Connection Charges (merged threads)

A question about : BT Connection Charges (merged threads)

Does anyone know if there is anybody else who can connect a phone line other than BT. Unfortunately this is the second time i am moving in to a 'NEW BUILD' house within a year and a half. When i moved in to here i had to pay Ј75 connection fee, now i have just found out that it has been increased to Ј125. A whopping Ј50 increase. How wrong is that!! Last time they came out it took 5 mins. How can they justify all that money?

Best answers:

• could cost £100,000 to cable to the New build, you only pay £125, swings and roundabouts
  and no, there is no alternative unless Yelewest/NTL cable go past the house
• They don`t even "come out" as it`s all done at the exchange,about a 5 second job.
  A friend recently moved into a new studio apartment,this new block has 72 apartments and BT wants to rip off 72 people at £125 a time.
  Nine grand (£9,000) just for one building.
  The sooner they are completely broken up the better.
• I cant believe that this debate still goes on. Just pay the Flipping money and get it done. If you have moved in to 2 new build homes in a year then you can afford it. There are some real people here who struggle to pay their bills.
  Its like going on holiday then moaning about the cost of a passport.
  A £125 quid to get a working phone line installed in you house for the rest of your homes life which is also maintained and worked on if necessary is in my opinion a good return.
• 'They don`t even "come out" as it`s all done at the exchange,about a 5 second job.'
  Oh, do they? Seems almost stupid. As someone quite rightfully pointed out, Ј125 is nothing compared to how much it actually costs BT to do the work in the first place. Yeah, so the builders have put the boxes on the wall in your new house. Did they connect them to the lines and sort you at the exchange? Did they register your new line with BT's computers, set up an account and pay the engineers?
  And again, quite right: who is the one company that everyone !!!!!es to when the line goes down, and who fixes the line free of charge if anything goes wrong even if you're not with BT? Hmm? Yeah.
  Sooner they're broken up the better? That'll be great: we'll just have people moaning tenfold that they have to wait ages for a repair that they'll have to pay for themselves because they went for the cheapest possible solution. End of the day, a lot of the time, you get what you pay for.
• My heart really bleeds for BT.
  With inflation running at 2.5%,how can they justify a massive 25% increase.
• i had a fault with my line last week - phoned bt who had engineer out the next day - he phoned me direct to tell me it was major digging up road to fix job - bt had it fixed three days later and they even sent me regular text messages with job updates - they would have diverted all my calls to my mobile for free while the work was going on and given me a rebate to cover calls made on my mobile whilst my line was dodgy - the original engineer even turned up at my door on friday morning to check everything was back to normal - its the best customer service i've had from anyone in ages - certainly compared to talk talk who i used to have broadband with and who ignore calls and emails for weeks on end - excellent service for £11/month
• I'm with others on this. In this case BT is quite right to charge such a fee.
  Why is it that you can afford a new house with all the 'fees' that attracts, but view payment for a telephone line too much?
• I have recently moved into a new property that has a BT box etc but when I called to tell them I was moving and ask to be connected up they said I was looking at about 135.00 even though the box ans everything was there, does anyone have any ideas on how to get around this please? there is no NTL and my mobile has little signal and can't change it.
• No way around it (sorry).
  As it's a new property then the 1st occupant will pay the connection charge *always* .. yeah it's unfair but BT have to recoup their charge of pre-wiring the property, cabling in the street.
  In actual fact, the true cost of installing a BT line is in excess of £400
  If it was simply a reconnection then that would be different.
  Cheers
  Lycrawearer
• thanks, but is it no madness that the have had to pay for it to be wired etc, yet will never get the money back eventually via my line rental etc because its so expensive?
• i think it's something people should factor into the equation when they pay on average £185 000 for a house. people could recoup the outlay when selling the house on by offering the house for say £275 135
• other companies can do it for chaeper.ive heard of some companies doing it for 109.99 + vat and they give cheaper line rent.