I am currently a BT customer and have just moved house. There is a BT master socket in the new flat and I plugged in a phone to grab the number (17070 function) and got the line designation.

When I rang up BT to activate the new line they say that the line has not been active for over 2 years/disconnected at the exchange/can't be found (or some other rubbish) and they will need to send an engineer (£120 and 3 week wait). Are the just trying to screw me? What other options are there for installing a phone line, quicker and cheaper if possible...Cable is not available just FYI. Can I negotiate them down?

I looked into Sky who said £39 installation and £11 p/m and probably the same wait....are they all like this and if so can anyone recommend a package?

Thanks,
Nick

The work your line requires will ONLY be carried out by BT OPENREACH, so the timescale quoted by anyone will be the same.

The price is a different matter :- BT OPENREACH want paid so will charge the provider,
BT will pass on £120 to you,
from your quote from Sky they are absorbing some of the charge and passing £39 to you,
I beleive TALKTALK pass on £69 (but check with them).

Find out which providers are available from your exchange and check what each will offer you (play one off against the other)

But please note if you go with another provider than BT, come the time when you may wish to switch provider you may be asked to pay a fee to switch to BT, this applies to some (not all) providers

As for reccommendations, I was in a similar situation moving into a new build house, I went with the whole sky package TV, Phone, Broadband and because of that got them to waive the installation fee. I have been very happy with quality, price, and customer service.

Not necessarily.
As the line has not been active for over 2 years BT will initially treat it as a completely new provision ie no equipment exists and everything needs to be provided from new. The line will have been "ceased" and no record of it will exist on BT's systems - even if the actual circuit has not been physically removed by Openreach. Therefore you are quoted the maximum connection charge.
However, once the line is up and working, the Openreach engineer should indicate all apparatus was "in-situ" and the actual connection charge that you would be billed for would be considerably less.
The reason that BT always quote the maximum charge is that the charge actually billed can be decreased from that initial quotation.
Had BT quoted, say £25.00 for arguments sake, but then found that external or internal wiring needed replacing they would want to increase that charge to cover the additional cost. BT would be unable to do that under consumer legislation.

In the meantime the customer, unaware of this or not wanting to take the risk, goes looking at other providers.