I've also just come up against this issue so thought I'd share what I did - thanks @ all i want is a phone line in an earlier post.

I've gone the Post Office route - I was lucky that the line on my property was only stopped by previous owner and not fully disconnected so the PO will activate if for free (otherwise it's £110). You have to accept a 15 day contract @ £12/mth which is negligible. It takes 2 weeks to be activated & I'll cancel the contract as soon as it's up and transfer to the best value provider for phone & internet (most likely O2).

So there's a small cost but I avoid tie in on line rental & no £100+ activation fee.

I may have the answer for you as it has worked for me 3 times so far whilst i have moved properties and also has worked for members of my family.

Fistly you ring BT and ask for their prepay landline they will try to talk you out of it and tell you it has a 12 month contract but agree to all this and tell them that you really only want prepay. They will give you a date when the lines goes on and you new number. This is the best part then you can contact whoever it is that you actually do want to change to and explain that you have a bt line and what your new number is. You will recieve a top up card in the post and your line will go active as soon as youmake the first months payment which is around £10 .Beauty is that you have the right to cancell within 14 days by law and they cant do a thing about it if you have already switched to someone else within that time and they cannot hold you to a 12 month contract either. This really works tell your friends its worked for me . There is no connection charge like any other tarrif you have from bt because the calls are so high thats where they get their money from but you wont be using this anyway as you will have already switched. And dont panic about getting broadband they will tell you they cannot enable your line for it on prepay. But the people you will switch to can. Hope this helps.

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Actually the BT operator will not tell you. There's option, i think option 3, the lesser package, and it ties you to only 3 months. I got that confirmed by carephone HQ. It was a 4-5 months ago, that options is there, even you get activated you don't need a full 12 months, only 3 months. BT operators will never tell you that. Contact carphone warehouse, not the muppets on the phone, you need to get CEO office, the muppets rep at call centre do not have a clue about the unbundling of the local loops, no wonder Carphone warehouse has under performed. Any engineer can go to the exchange but the line are in digital exchange, so it can swtiched from a latop, the small operators do not want to invest, so they lose customers, and it does not makes sense.

Utility Warehouse do line installations and line activations.

But they have to use BT openreach engineers like all alternative providers have to.

To install a line, it costs £99 and to have the line activated £25

This does tie you in for 12 months with them for line rental £8.99 a month, but this is classed as a compatible BT line which sky etc require for their tv service.

chris

I am going through a similar issue at the moment.

I have opted to get connected with the Post Office as cheaper than BT and dont tie you to a contract. I had the engineer booked for this morning. However, when I plugged a phone in last week, the line worked fine and I get incoming calls as well as being able to dial out.

I told the PO this and suggested we cancel the engineer however, they said they needed to check and would get back to me. In the mean time, I contacted TalkTalk to organise a phone/ internet package but they couldnt find any evidence of the live line. The PO said this was because I had a temporary line and it would not show up untill the date the line was due to go live.

The live day was today and a very interesting thing happened. By accident, I missed the engineer and when I contacted TalkTalk this morning the line showed up on their system as live. Delighted by this I thought we would be able to avoid the connection totally. However, now the line is gone again (on TalkTalk's system, though I can still use the phone). What I think has happened is that the post office must have the ability to make the line go live centrally and did this but then disconnected it when the appointment was missed.

I feel very agrieved and am deeply suspicious about whether any engineer does in fact have to come out to activate the line at all. Moreover, if he goes out to the exchange to do it, why do I have to wait in at the house? I am told by the PO it is just to check everything is okay. I asked why then, upon not being able to contact me to confirm the appointment, the engineer didn't just connect the line at the exchange? However, no credible answer was forthcoming.

I really feel that there is no good reason for having to pay this connection fee but as far as I can gather there is not much I can do about it!!!

Any suggestions?

Altough you have a line at your premises there may be work required at the exchange. The activate of any BT line is done by the company Openreach, part of the BT group, on provider's request. It sounds like the agents are doing a search on your premises and not finding a recognised BT line. The standard Openreach charge is £130 however some company's pay part of the fee for you, that's why tiscali do it for £90. If work has to be done then there's no way around the fee, unless you can sweet talk the agent to getting the provider to waiver the charges, or sometimes BT do a special promotion of a £30 connection fee, but I think that was last month. If there was a charge you could dispute it by contacting the proivider you joined, they could then speak to Openreach and see from the engineer notes what work had to be done. But once again, it's an Openreach charge which provider's don't have control over

So it's either take a chance where a fee occurs to get the BT line up and running or use a mobile. If it's for broadband only you could try one of 3's mobile dongles where you don't need a telephone line :)

I have just moved into a new property.....there is a land line.....it has a dial tone.....and it reaches the exchange using 17070......but when i give BT the number on the exchange they say there is no line in the house and i must pay £120 for the privilege of sending someone out

Tiscali said they would do it for £90

Post Office Said they would do it for £110

Why are they charging so much when there is a live line there already.........Is there any were i can check if the line is active. I don't trust BT as they are now all sales people and not customer service engineers like they used to be, so i dont belive them when they say that there systems are never wrong and there is no active conection

All I want is a telephone service

I was with Virgin in the last property on a Cable line, there was no charge for the line to be fitted to the property......but I'm not in a virgin area anymore

Is there a good dependable service that is not going to charge me for connection

HI Dawn

I will be contacting ofcom first thing. No It does not cost £250, to switch, that's what BT may say and stiffle competition, if that would be the case it would cost many £billions for other companies. These things take 2 minutes job, I have a telecom engineer friend. Either they switched at box and do an electronic switch.

Anyway, I agree Talktalk I prefer to pay TT that 100 than paying BT a penny, and certainly I will never a contract with them.

Well ViriginMedia and Vigin Credit card are 2 different entities. Pickle Branston got a stake in NTL, I think the biggest mistake of his life. Since Sky removed all the channel from VirginMedia, people are leaving droves, Branston and co. thought they could outsmart Murdoch, most people watched sky one as all the nice programs like Lost, Prison break. VM still charged us the same price even with sky channels. Now they are increasing the phone charges, every other telco bringing prices down. Even their international calls are like mobile operators cost.

I keep you inform

Cheers

S

Hiya,

Cheers for the reply. That sounds like total hassle. I've been really impressed by my Virgin credit card, but have never had any other services from them (sounds just as well!).

Please let me know how you get on with Talk Talk. OFCOM said that they were still in the "testing" phase of this, so that's why their staff wouldn't know about it.

I've since read on another forum that it costs quite a lot for these companies to send an engineer to the exchange (it has to be activated from the exchange, not just by a computer anywhere), but as BT own OpenReach (they company who provide the engineers), they can offset the cost. Apparently, it costs over £100 for activation and around £250 for switching and checking at the box on the premises. So, I reckon that Talk Talk will never provide this service, as they'll try to keep their call costs as low as possible. Still, they should give you the option to pay for it yourself as it would probably still work out cheaper to pay £100 to Talk Talk for activation and be with them instantly, rather than being with BT for 12 months!

Anyway, would love to know how you get on with this.

Good luck!!

Dawn

HI Dawn

I have the exact problem. My current suplier VirginMedia another *** company that is going down messed me up, some greedy salesman gave me a new contract without my permission, I have void that agreement, I do not care if Virginmedia take me to court. When I got NTL bundles 4 years ago, they removed my phone connection from the exchange box, so they can tie me down, I still have my BT connection at home.

Now, I phoned BT, asked them to reactivate the line as I want to use BRoadband+line rental + phone services from Talktalk. They said £125 to send the engineer to connect me at the BOX, and then I have 12 months contract with them. I told the stupid girl, I just my line to be activated, and she did not understand what I meant by activated, at the end she hung the phone on me. I phoned BT again, this time I got a decent guy, he understood what I meant by activation, and he said I still had to have a contract, but he told me a TalkTalk engineer can go and activate my line at the exchange, well I was surprised.

I phoned Talktalk and told them BT said a TalkTalk engineer can go an activate my line at the exchange, does not need a BT engineer, to my surprise these idiots at talktalk never heard that a Talktalk engineer can do that, that's the main purpose of unbundling. I was willing to pay BT £125 to activate my line, but I am not going to have a contract with BT, I do not like them at all. Now, I am stuck with that crap Virginmedia, most probably will go bust soon with their $5 bn debt, while all telephone charges are going down NTL is hiking the price by nearly 30%, they are desperate. They are charging £18 for 2MB broadband amazing, and £25 for 4MB. I had enough of VirginMedia, they are losing customers in droves. My services are going up every month, now nearly £90. I can have all these services from sky and talktalk for £36. Virginmedia should not have disconnected my line at the exchange.

I am going to call Ofcom tomorrow and ask for advice and documentation that a talktalk engineer can connect my phone line at the exchange without a BT engineer. I am going to forward those documents to line manager or a director at Talktalk, they should know that they can go at the exchange themselves, it sounds they don't have a clue of the regulations of unbundling of local loop. Anyway, these switches can be activated from a computer, they are all electronic exchange.

I am so desperate to stop giving Virginmedia my money, they have not treated me like a valued customer, I always get some gobby customer adviser on the phone, these useless idiots do not know people like me who are indirectly paying their salaries. I do not care what Virginmedia says about my contract, I will void whatever they say. I have been with them 4 years, why would i have another contract this feb 2008 with them, laughable, they would lose in court.

Bye

Sunseeker

I have just switched back to BT ? BT broadband that is , but stayed with talk talk for line rental and calls , BT T & C now state "that you need a BT line or similar" . I just argued that my line is a BT line going to a BT exchange and serviced by BT engineers despite my paying line rental to Talk Talk for call package. They signed me up no problem and I'm going live on 18th April 08 no hesitation what so ever and the best bit ? the sales girl spoke english too .

I couldn't understand why BT are the only company who can connect a landline (sometimes at a cost of £125) and that you then HAVE to enter a 12-month contract with them. I can't stand BT and don't want to give them any money. This also seems to eliminate any choice, which seems to be against consumer choice laws.

I have found out through BT, and had this confirmed by OFCOM that: as several landline call providers complained to OFCOM that BT were connecting people who wanted BT Broadband quicker than everyone else, that all landline rental providers should also be able to connect people. OFCOM agreed. The entire system (including BT's computer system) has been changed to allow this. Yet virtually none of them have taken this up.

I have just had two frustrating conversations with Talk Talk (Sales dept and Customer Service) where I was saying that I want to go with Talk Talk for line rental, calls + broadband, but am being forced to go with BT for 12 months as Talk Talk won't connect me, even though they can. They kept saying they couldn't, despite me explaining the above to them and saying "You can, but you won't - why?". Got nowhere.

Does anyone have any idea which companies WILL connect you. I only need the connection that BT offers for free (an engineer goes to the exchange and presses a switch) as opposed to the one where BT charge you £125 (an engineer goes to the premises and checks the line). According to OFCOM there are quite a few companies who are doing it now, but they can't tell me who in case they miss anyone out. They have all been able to do it for ages, but most of them still don't!

Hopeful that someone is in the know!

Dawn