The house I moved into last year use virgin/ntl for its phone and broadband connection. I asked BT to connect up their line which they said was working and alive when I first moved in, but when the engineer called he could not find it in the house and could only trace it as far as the edge of the garden. To get a connection would mean getting a contractor to dig a trench across the garden to lay a new cable from the public footpath where they knew the cable was to the house, about 8 foot and about £400 ( the engineers guess). BT claim this is an inherited problem and I have to pay to be connected, even though I didn't sever the line myself. Does anyone know a way out of this without paying loads of money to BT or 'am I stuck with virgin

P.S. Asked the engineer if I could find the cable and dig the trench myself, but the answer was a definite NO.

I'm confused here (easily done some may say).

You say "I asked BT to connect up their line which they said was working and alive ..." yet in the same breath you then say that the engineer couldn't find it in the house. If it is - as you say - traced up to the edge of the garden then it is impossible for BT to have stated that the line was working and alive.

I take it that your current Broadband and 'phone is in a former NTL area so is running on their cable system. Even so, unless you home is a new build, I would be surprised if there wasn't an existing BT connection somewhere and I would ask your conveyancing solicitor to see if this has been declared in the "material facts" during the purchase.

If you are unlucky to have bought a house that has never had a BT connection, I'm afraid it is going to be an expensive connection for you and I would weigh up the benefits against the expense. If, however, you discover that your home has had a BT connection in the past, then I would take up the matter with the previous owners and your conveyancing solicitor to establish the facts and then see what can be done to restore service. Ask your neighbours to see if they have BT and if so, ask them to show you where their service enters the house. BT rarely deviates from established routes so you could see if your home really has a line or not.

SHARK!

Hi Shark

Sorry, didn't quite word it right. Yes presently my phone and internet run off ntl cable. Also at some time there was a BT connection to the house which I presume was fitted when the house was built about 25 years ago. I think this was probably disconnected/severed when ntl cable was fitted. When I asked BT to reconnect, whoever I spoke to tested something and said the line was live and just needed an engineer to call. The BT engineer who visited found marks on the inside where their wall socket origionally was just below the ntl socket, but no wires. We assumed they had been cut off and hidden under the polished wooden floor which I really dont want to rip up. Outside the engineer traced the phone line from a BT manhole down the road, along under the footpath and then upto the edge of the garden, from this point on he said the it went all over the place and couldn't trace it. He also checked where the neighbours line entered their house and had a dig in the same area, but again no trace of the wire. The only thing to do was to dig a trench from the house to the point where they knew the phone line was for sure. The ntl/virgin line works fine, but it restricts choice of provider for phone and internet by not having a BT line. The previous owner will most definitely be a bit difficult to contact, so it looks like I'am stuck with ntl/virgin unless I pay up a few hundred pounds which would probably outweight the benefits.

Thanks

Andrew 66

p.s. I've been told stories by several people that cable engineers cut bt lines in awkward places just to discourage people from reconnecting them, how true this is I don't know.

This is true but bt will still charge you a rediculous amount of money to reconnect!! Search through some threads on the site there's a company (in some way connected to BT) who offer exactly the same apparently but cheaper. I remember one of the guys posting it last month I think, sorry slept since then. Hope this helps

In my long experience its not at all possible for BT to say two things at once and consistency in ways and patterns of installing is patchy to say the least. Have you ever read their small print for letting an engineer into your home? I have, We had some complex work to be done so I sent it to my insurers and they refused to accept the liabilities imposed. I ended up with a local contractor instead.

There are two issues here.

The first is to ask did BT make any kind of quotation verbally or in writing based on their 'testing' of the line and before you made a decision instructing them to re-connect? If they did were there any conditional statements or provisos . . . eg. subject to this that or the other? If they did 'quote' rather than tentatively 'estimate' hedged about with conditions then you can hold them to that quote. After all you were entitled to rely upon their expert opinion. Otherwise your'e a little stuffed!

The second is that for reasons of speed and economy cables usually run in straight lines. There is nothing to stop you digging your own exploratory trench to find the cable. If you do not find it or it is severed you can then ask for a quotation to connect in your own ready made trench from boundary to house.

Indeed, if it is not too much hassle for you there is no reason why you cannot have an outdoor termination in a sealable chamber at the edge of your property. You can have the master or primary socket installed there and what you do after that so long as it meets regulations and any planning constraints- you probably can't put up a pole and have slung conductors to the house, garage and garden shed! - is entirely your own business. One of our family homes in a deeply rural area has this, it saved a fortune in BT sending contractors to trench everything in from the boundary to the house. Do not be put off by spurious claims that you are not allowed to do that. It may be unusual but its not impossible.

And, yes, there is an element of rivalry by sabotage we encountered it ourselves when we bought a little property for temporarily housing a student. In this instance it was the phone installation that did for the cable tail.

Anyway, hope things get sorted for you.

Thank you, Daisy25 I'ill have a search, but most probably end up staying with virgi/ntl. If the weather drys up I will have a dig about as BB suggests when I get time. Thanks fisherman I think BT are probably like most big companies who have specially employed people to contradict each other and totally baffle customers. As for you suggestion about an outside terminal box, some houses on this estate have them and in others the wires just go under the wall and come up in the living room corner. I've been told of one where the phone line goes right under the house and comes up in the kitchen at the back. Also the engineer who visited told me that the line should go in the straightest shoertest possible route to the house, but that builder moved them, buried them in different places and generally messed about with them when they had no right to .

Thank you everyone for the help and suggestions

Andrew

Andrew

Hi Andrew, I suspect I didn't make the location of the outdoor termination clear . . . You can have it at the boundary of the property rather than the house. Basically you sink a sealable box into the ground at the end of the BT feed and place an order for a master socket in that. No BT trenching and costs. As our land was never dug we only sank our own line a spades blade deep between the boundary and the house. No need for a trench or disturbance.

Afternoon Offshore, That would be a good solution as even someone as dangerous as me with a spade could manage a short shallow trench, its only about 6 feet from the footpath to the front of the house. Just had a look on the bt website, the cost of a new line is quoted as £124.99 with a 12 month agreement to stay with them, its not clear if the cost of digging would be included in this, somehow I doubt it. Also as before I think the cost of paying BT's expensive charges would be a lot more than the amount saved by going back to them, after all there's never been a problem yet with the ntl cable ( apart from the vast amount of adverts that come in the post ) and the internet is faster enough for what little I use.

Thanks

Andrew66