Me and 5 house mates are moving into a house soon, (well we already own it) and the land lord Sais we have to organize our own broadband and phone. we have been to the house and there is a phone line, and the last occupants had broadband and obviously a working phone line.

I rang BT and told them the house name and address, and said I need a phone line setup under out name. They want to charge the 125 reconnection charge.

why? should i pay it? i mean im happy to pay 12 months line rental or whatever but the line IS THERE and it CLEARLY WORKED last year so WHY do i have to pay to have it RECONNECTED when it is CONNECTED?

It is most likely the line is still active under the last tennants 12 month broadband contract.

please advise.

Plug a telephone onto the connection and see whether the line is working. If the line is working, there is not even any question of any reconnection.

If not working, contact OFCOM and Otelo and complain about BT's rip off attempts to hold you to ransom.

Are there any Cable Companies running in the area from whom you could get a phone line, as an alternative to BT?

However be warned of BT. My Son plus 6 moved into a house, where one of the Students a foreigner had already applied for the BT line to be relayed just to her room in Sept 2007

The Landlord had agreed months before that my Son would take responsibility for the telephone and BroadBand and that the telephone was to be shared.

The foreigner when told, cancelled her BT contract.

Then the fun started. BT claimed that my Son was asking for a 2nd line to be installed. My Son and I must have written about 100 emails/faxes, letters etc., to BT pointing out the erroneous nature of the BT claim.

Plus I personally spent at least 20 hrs holding onto BT various exchanges attempting to get through to some invisible Customer Service bod at BT - what a waste of time that was!!!

Verbally, some foreigner or other - probably from BT India rang in answer to the correspondence, once or twice, and said BT agreed with us and would sort it out, but BT failed to sort out anything.

BT kept sending bills with this additional £150.00 charge for the 2nd line to be installed and we kept telling BT to get lost, paying the rental and telephone charges, but not the 2nd line charge.

Then when the BT bills were amounting to almost £400.00 - with BT adding interest and unpaid fee charges, in January 2008, BT cut off the telephone and disconnected everyone in the house, including some Chinese Students who were just about to celebrate the Chinese New Year through the internet with their families back in China. There was uproar.

It then took a further month of our making a formal complaint to OFCOM and OTELO who referred us to BT high level complaints, where the problem was immediately resolved after having taken almost a month to get through the layers of OFCOm and OTELO and then BT.

BT paid £150.00 compensation, but this really was no compensation for the uproar and just before everyone's exams in the house.

The entire BT bill was thrown in the waste paper bin and we have only recently started to pay BT rental and call charges!!

But what a NIGHTMARE WITH A PHONE CUT OFF and I intend to take issue with OFCOM that where there is a valid issue, with unresolved correspondence between BT and a customer, that BT and other monopoly type supply businesses should never be permitted to disconnect anyone.

So, good luck and do not let BT get away with their outrageous charges.

I understand they often start with the Reconnection Charge when attempting to coerce unsuspecting potential customers to enter uinto a 12 months plus contract which would be totally inappropriate for Students' Sep/Oct to June the next new year. But what do BT care, when they're just trying to protect their income stream!!

Don't waste your time or money wattempting to complain to BT - write one letter of complaint - send it by email and then (by email if possible - from home or College) go straight to OFCOM and OTELO and ask for BT higher level complaints.

Thing to remember is the line might not be a BT line. Rental could have been paid to any number of companies and could even be on a seperate network to BTs ie. Talktalk or Tiscali.

No point in complaining to Ofcom since you have a choice of providers willing to arrange installation of a "BT" line.

The Post Office don't have a minimum rental term and resell a BT Wholesale product, The Phone Co-op do short term rentals if just a line restart is required, Plusnet, Madasafish, Sky and others will install a line.

Be aware though that the cheapo outfits, Talktalk and Tiscali require an active BT line but won't arrange installation for you.

Forgot to say if you want BT retail to connect your line there's a £30/18 month deal at the moment , notice 25/08

Might have to try a few times to get someone who knows about it and they may say it's for returning cable customers but doesn't say that anywhere in Terms and Conditions.