Post office – telephone line activation, better than BT!

Just got off the phone with a very helpful person at the post office. The problem is we have moved to a house that had a non functioning telephone line (in this case it doesn’t even have a phone point in the property, just a non working line) due to the house being empty for a very long time before we purchased it.

Initially I phoned BT who said it would cost me £125 to “reconnect” plus I would have to join a 12 month contract with them for line rental.

After speaking with the post office they will send an engineer round to re-activate the line and install a new master phone point in the house – for free!

Admittedly I have also taken up their offer of paying them for the line rental (standard price of £11 per month) but out of a choice of BT, Sky, Talk Talk or the Post Office I might as well pay line rental to the Post Office.

Thought this might be of use to some people as I have seen threads regarding BT continuing to try and rip off consumers and hope this information will help counter it.

I thought you had to pay BT for the line rental and then any service (Sky, Talk Talk etc) costs on top. I could be wrong as we have always had cable.

Didnt realise the Post Office had their own telephone lines. They probably just paid BT to reconnect the line.

J.B said:

I thought you had to pay BT for the line rental and then any service (Sky, Talk Talk etc) costs on top. I could be wrong as we have always had cable.

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In our old house we had nothing to do with BT at all, just the way I like it personally You can now pay the line rental directly to another provider e.g. Talk Talk or Sky.

What I wasn't aware of, and I'm sure some other forum members were the same was that somebody other than BT could re-provision the line.

They can't, as far as I know. I'm guessing they stick you on a contract for a specific call plan, and subsidise the line fee payable to bt.

It's Wholesale Line Rental - they're charged the £125, so they're making it up somewhere or losing money.

The engineer which turns up is likely to be from BT Openreach - they still get paid in the end - they own all the lines.

Funny how things almost come full circle - the telephone system was owned/run by the GPO before being sold off to BT at a criminally low price in the 80s.

And then upgraded at obscene cost by BT, while the GPO couldn't be arsed.

Sky charge less than bt for line rental £10 instead of £11. I assume they make up the difference from interest.

I'm with the Post Office, can't recommend them enough, they use OpenReach to have the line put in and the charge is £115 so saving you a tenner, you then have to pay line rental to them and get free evening and weekend calls (mobiles and int at weekends too). The good thing is though, they don't tie you to any contract with the line rental so you can get a line with them then switch to someone else if you want.

I've found their customer service to be excellent, I've got broadband with them too, best price I could find after you add in line rental considering I can't get LLU or cable (£20 a month total) and I'm getting 7Mb. Good tech support as well, they helped me set up my own router with all the settings I needed.

Five_Star said:

After speaking with the post office they will send an engineer round to re-activate the line and install a new master phone point in the house – for free!

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How did you manage that, did you have to haggle with them to get it free? What number did you call?

Speed said:

How did you manage that, did you have to haggle with them to get it free? What number did you call?

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I can't remember the number sorry I was given it by a Talk Talk call centre after they couldn't provide me a line. I have not yet received a bill for any installation work (yet!) and I better not. I was told on the phone that I would be signed on to the £11 monthly tariff and that there was no charge for the engineer to re-activate the line and install a master box.

I'll be having strong words if I am charged, perhaps I avoided it as there was a line at the house, all be it non functioning?

Did an engineer come to your house? I think if they can just do a reconnect via Openreach without using an engineer it's free, if not I thought you had to pay, well I did anyway but I was actually disconnected at the exchange and an engineer came to my house.

If they did charge you it'll be on your first bill.

Yes, he came and installed a master socket to the existing line that was non-active, didn't mention that it would cost us. I guess either the people before had no phone or were on cable or the builders removed the phone point.

I think you were quite lucky, I doubt I'd be able to pull of the same thing. Our BT line was actually taken down years ago.

WLR providers are only cheaper if you have no desire to use indirect calling providers or more than one select service

The fact that it adds a middle man to BT bugs me also. You can no longer contact BT, must all be done through your provider. Does this still apply for voice faults or must you still contact your provider who contact BT for you?

Irrespective of the type of fault, you will need to report it to your provider, who will in turn escalate it to BT Openreach where appropriate