Hi all

I've been trying to get BT out to connect a line into the new-build apartment I've just moved into, but it is turning into the mother of all headaches!

Here's what's happened so far:

26/27 June - placed order for connection by phone, paid (so I thought) £50 deposit; was given a provisional number and a connection appointment on the afternoon of 14 July.

14/7 - I sit here from 1pm onwards, but no sign of anyone. At 5pm I call BT, just to check all's OK (had a bad feeling abiout it, don't know why!).

Get told that the order I placed hadn't been processed properly, so no appointment made. I explain about being a contractor and not being paid when I'm not at work, but all they're prepared to offer me is £10 missed appointment compensation, and 1 month free line rental as a gesture of good-will. That is frankly an insult! I know that the £10 thing is standard, but it's simply not good enough, when I get paid £25-30 an hour!

Speak to one of the call centre coaches, who is as patronising as anything, so insist on making a formal complaint and ask for a call-back from as senior a manager as possible, as he seems incapable coming to any sort of acceptable compromise. He gives me a new connection date of the afternoon of 29 July.

20th July - get a text message saying "they"'ve had to reschedule my connection to 30th July, but I have already arranged the time off on 29 July with work, and I have to bwe overseas on 30th. Call them back and explain, but nothing really sorted, apart from a promise tyo chase the phone call I was told I'd get from a centre manager within 48 hours, on 14 July.

24 July - get a phonecall from Openreach, checking the appointment date, which they also have as 30th July. I explain vthat I was originally tiold 29th, and have made business arrangements around this, so I can't make it on 30th. I get told that the 29th must be unavailable, but that she'll try to make an appointment on it for me, just to show me that she can't do it - but ashe can, no trouble! She tells me that it's all sorted, but can't explain why it was changed; she assures me it won't be again.

Later the same day, I call BT again to chase the call-back I was promised, and when they checked all thier systems, the connection appt was still showing for 30th. I explained the whole situation (again!), and made it clear that changing the appointment would result in cancellation of the whole order. Still no word on why I haven't been caslled back.

28th July - receve a text mwessage saying appointment confirmed for 30th July in the morning (which I would never have agreed to in the first place, as it's far easier for me to get off work in the afternoon).

SO far today, I've made 2 calls to BT to find out what the hell is going on, but so far have nothing other than a load of empty words and no action.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get this sorted????

VM isn't an option, as my street isn't cabled, though I am trying to canvass for it.

I am so at the end of my rope with this!!!!

I had a very similar story so I won't repeat it on here. My best advice is to get onto the BBC Watchdog site and search for BT. There is a form on there that gets sent to BT Customer Care in Belfast. They do get back to you pretty quickly and they finally sorted out my problems - although I can't say that it will be done in time for when you leave the country.

Believe me, you have every sympathy I can muster!

My house mate is having similar problems, but this is trying to activate an already existing line in a shared house (for some odd reason we have dedicated lines in each room rather than the landlord providing broadband straight). So far three failed appointments (he even got two confirmation letters for the first, but then was told none had been made!), with the current advise being £125 for the engineer to flick a switch in the damn exchange - still no line, and no chance to get broadband until it's sorted.

VM isn't an option here either, as bridging the 1m gap between the Diamond Cable manhold cover next to the garden wall and house is beyond there capabilities (the old Diamond Cable trick of just laying the cable in the flowerbed then tacking round the door frame is obviously no longer permissible).

It's reassuring to know that others understand my pain. It really is a shambles.

Have just spoken to BT again now, and they've confirmed with Openreach that the appointment is for 29th and not 30th, so we'll just have to see now if anyone turns up. If they don't, I may well spontaneously self-combust!

I have asked once again for a manager to contact me though, as I'm not going to let them treat me as shoddily as this. And what's equally frustrating to hear is that I'll have to stump up £124.99 for a switch to be flicked, but there's an offer that was running a couple of weeks ago (not 100% sure if it still is), offering ppl who'd sign up to 18 moth contracts £95 off the cost of connection. That's what I'm going to push for on the basis that I wasn't initially offered it, or even when I phoned to find out that the order hadn't been processed properly, which I think it should have been.

I've been told by VM that they may cable the street at some point in the future, but it certainly won't be in the next couple of years.

Why is there no-one else to go to for a phone line connection??? It seems ludicrous! If it weren't for the fact that I have to stay with BT for at least 12 months (so I've been told) or face a cancellation penalty, I'd be off like a shot! I had problems with BT a few years ago, which prompted my switch to VM, and I vowed that I would never go back, and here I am wishing I didn't have to! They're quick enough to take your money, but the service is dreadful!!

It's little wonder the number of landline phone customers is dropping and mobile broadband is taking off in popularity.

There are also other wireless (not WiFi) providers around if that's all you need it for - I Need Broadband in Nottingham http://ineedbroadband.co.uk/ , and NOW Wireless Broadband in Slough http://www.mynow.co.uk/

That's nothing. BT re-connected an existing dead line and added a Broadband Connection to an address I lived at two years ago.....

Oy vey!!

Hopefully I'm not going to jinx things, but I may have got what I wanted, which was in effect just a bit of compromise and a conversation with someone I fel genuinely gave a sh!t about my complaint.

Providing the reconnection goes OK tomorrow, I have been promised 3 months free line rental and some cash compo for the first missed appointment. I really hope it doesn't all go tits-up as it's making me really irate and depressed at ther same time, which is not good for someone with manic depression!

If it were just broadband I'd have tried to find an alternative, but I need the phoneline as well, and I was told I couldn't swap to any other supplier till I had a working BT line. Well, with a bit of luck it'll all be taken care of by this time tomorrow.

Fingers and toes all crossed.....

Which, of course, was a lie.

BT are wondering why I moved my calls away from them and hopefully when the 12 months is up come next February I will be moving my phone line. I had similar problems as the OP and even when it was suppose to be fixed they still had the old telephone number as working and not my new number. It took me another two weeks to get my line fully working.

To top it off they even tried to install BT broadband on my line as well even though I told them that I didn't want it and I already was using a ISP that I was still under contract with and I have just found out that they sent my recent bill to my old address showing my new number on the bill, so now my old landlord (who I had a massive falling out with) has now got my new number because these idiots that work at BT couldn't send it to the right address.

I think it's about time BT had some decent competition that will give them the kick up the arse that they need. BT has had too much of a monopoly and it should be broken up once and for all.

It was never like this years ago before the likes of Ofcom forced BT to seperate BT Retail from the engineers to form Openreach, which are still part of BT Group but Ofcom still force them to work seperately.

Not sure who is to blame here, Ofcom? the likes of Sky, Tiscali, TalkTalk or BT themselves? Must say that BT do get a lot of the blame but Ofcom forced this situation as it is now. The pressure would have been put on them by the likes of Sky, TalkTalk etc.

The customers that suffer most of all are the new customer's ordering lines, which are not actually classed as customers until the landline is installed.

The fact is, all these service/communications providers are in existence to offer a competitive telecom market but they will only take business away from BT so no doubt the priority for BT is keeping their existing customers or getting customers back from other providers that they have switched to.

I had to wait almost six months for my landline and it was a lot of hassle to get it sorted after agreeing to excess charges as well. BT Retail have gone some way to put things right as they can for me by offering 12 months free line rental and 6 months free broadband as well as removing the standard £125 installation charge. However, the excess charges are £650 and cannot do much about that as Openreach are the ones charging for this.

Openreach must operate fairly on behalf of all communications providers which I can understand. What I really don't like is that there is absolutely no communication between the customer and Openreach and things tend to get lost in the system as well. The Service Provider is the customer of Openreach and not the actual end-user. It's very difficult to contact openreach and they have to refer you to your communications provider. If the first appointment goes by and there is nothing happening, it's very important that you contact the Chairman's Office. The more complaints they receive, the more they will realise at some point, that the standard customer services need a real shaking up.

The Enterprise guy that came out here said he reckons that BT still have the monopoly, which they do where getting new customers is concerned.

What I read about other providers not providing new lines is that BT are the only ones with this system which would cost millions of pounds to implement for other providers. So for this market to move forward, TalkTalk, Sky and other providers must bring in this system. As soon as this happens, the monopoly is well and truly over. Ofcom must do more. They won't deal with BT not putting in new lines for customers on time.

That's my view on this anyway. All of this is fact and the reasons behind why things as they are right now.

I very much wish there was an alternativev to BT for people looking to connect new lines, as I'd never have gone back to BT in a million years if I didn't HAVE to. I canno9t believe that they still have such a monopoly on us.

My appointment is due for this afternoon, so we'll see what happens with regards to that, but as soon as my line's connected I'm going to start looking around for an alternative. If I end up having to continue paying BT my line rental then so be it, but I really want as little to do with them as possible after all this!

I've had to wait almost six months for a line so I'm not going to be one to defend them. To be honest, everyone blames BT when there is a problem with a phone line and even when talking about the likes of Openreach, we cannot help but just associate them with BT anyway. Well they are one division of the BT Group.

I would try blaming Ofcom as they seem to be blameless in all of this. I would write to them if I were you and maybe if others done the same on here then the process of ordering a new line could be made much better for customers.

BT customer services are a mess, you can be guaranteed to be speaking to someone abroad and I know if you call through to BT Vision department, you will be speaking to someone in the UK but they will only put you through to someone in the right department if it is not the BT Vision service you want to talk about.

Anyway, it is only Ofcom that have the power to change the current situation and not really BT.

I pointed out in my previous post that my main criticism of BT would be the way that you cannot be put into contact with anyone at Openreach, preferably someone that is rather local to your property so that they know the area and so on. Very useful if you want a better understanding of what work is to be completed when you are wondering what is taking so long.

Hope your appointment goes ahead this afternoon, after reading that you are going away tomorrow.

Not much point in changing provider if you are going to get some credit on your BT account for line rental. Usually find that switching services are nothing but a lot of hassle.

Well, I do now have a phoneline!! It took a bit of tinkering, but it's all sorted now, so I can chill a bit!! I just hope that's the end of the matter.

All I need to do now is look for a decent BB provider.....

I am glad to hear you got your nightmare sorted.

Looks like the Openreach system didn't write the new appointment details back to the BT Retail system.

The BT Retail advisor you spoke to should have checked the Openreach portal to confirm the order details and they would have been able to confirm your appointment date for today.


OFCOM didn't force the situation, BT agreed to the situation but haven't implemented good enough systems quickly enough, hence the prolems people are facing.

Any problems BT Retail customers are having is down to BT Retail, no-one else.


There is, several other providers offer connections via Openreach and any CP can place orders to Opnreach. Others have decided they don't want to have to go to the bother of playing provision/start orders for whatever reason.

Sorry, but you say BT agreed to the situation. Ofcom have their say on what goes. What would the other option for BT have been?

I don't think they really get a say in the matter and yes the systems they have in place are poor and I think that they have admitted to this. Reading from certain posters on the forum, the service from BT has been evidently poor over the past few years, since the proposed changes that Ofcom put to them and when Openreach came in. This was all thought up by Ofcom and not thought up too well in my opinion.

You have also said that there are several providers offering connections via Openreach. I know people have asked on this forum about the alternatives to placing an order via BT Retail and nobody seems to be sure of any, even a few openreach engineers themselves. Then you say that others have not bothered to offer new line installations. This is correct and I believe that this is due to the cost of implementing such a system.

I said in my previous post, I believe that there is still a monopoly and Ofcom are meant to be there to control this. I think that there must come a time and very soon where all communications providers are forced into offering new line installations. That way, new customers have a choice and not just restricted to BT Retail.

The alternative was that BT Group would have been required to sell off what is now Openreach, which would have entailed very similar systems issues I suspect.

true, they would had to have given us double shares, plus we would be like O2 now, bugger.

Ok, thanks. I guess like you suspect, from the end users point of view, the situation would be near enough as it is now had that happened instead. I still point the finger at Ofcom personally lol.

A family member had the exact same situation that the original poster describes. Dozens of phonecalls, appointments missed and re-arranged without warning, get told something different every time you ring up.

It was unbelievable what a farce it turned out to be, and they still haven't managed to get a line installed!

You have my sympathy!