Flat - Phone Line not Activated - help please!

mothermachine said:
This was a fresh BT line, never activated. That's what's P***** me off. It's the landlords line, not the tenants'. The tenant should be paying for the consumption of the utility, not for the hardware. It should be no different than a boiler. The tenant doesn't pay to have it connected, they just pay for the rolling use of it.
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It's not the landlords, the landlords wires are there and working, there's no missing hardware, it's just not activated. That is squarely your problem unless you agreed something in the contract.

And no it adding stuff to the contract is not illegal, don't like the contract walk away. This house I made them put in the bath room would be totally redecorated and shower put in within x-weeks. If that wasn't in the contract I would have walked.


Live and learn, next time in the contract, walk or be pre-paired to pay.
 
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mothermachine said:
This was a fresh BT line, never activated. That's what's P***** me off. It's the landlords line, not the tenants'. The tenant should be paying for the consumption of the utility, not for the hardware. It should be no different than a boiler. The tenant doesn't pay to have it connected, they just pay for the rolling use of it.

Anyway it's a poor situation. I could understand if there was no line in their at all, but he put one in and just didn't get the thing connected.... either through laziness or he knew full-well he wanted to push the cost onto the tenant.

I'm more angry at my idiot estate agent... he actually refused to let me stipulate that there be a working and active line in the contract.... that in itself is probably illegal I would have thought?!

I keep thinking:

"here's a purse of moneys. which I'm not going to give you"
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You aren't quite right. A landlord isn't really in a position to guarentee the line will be active. It would be inefficient and expensive from his point of view.
 
The land lord would be paying for the line rental if he kept it active. He could add that cost ontop of the rent but thats not ideal though if the tenant doesn't want to use the copper line. I've never rented a house with an active line. (5 properties in total)

You could order a line, cancel the contract within the first month cancellation period. Whilst the line is temporarily active, go to another provider and get them to perform a takeover order. This should then allow you to get LR without a reconnection fee....(this may not work)
 
So, technically speaking, the only proper thing to do is, as a tenant, insist on a clause in the contract that states that every single "thing" in the property is fully-working?

That seems ridiculous to me.
 
Try plusnet, the last two times I have moved flats the phone line wasn't activated they have activated it for free, I signed up both times online.
 
decmatt said:
Try plusnet, the last two times I have moved flats the phone line wasn't activated they have activated it for free, I signed up both times online.
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BT will do the same, they just require you to be in contract for 18months.
 
mothermachine said:
So, technically speaking, the only proper thing to do is, as a tenant, insist on a clause in the contract that states that every single "thing" in the property is fully-working?

That seems ridiculous to me.
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No, the thing is to find out about sky/virgin/phone before signing contract and getting it written down.

It's not some big conspiracy, this is standard practice. Activated phone lines are not part of your contract and will 99.99% never will be. Is the landlord going to pay to activate the landline when I leave? As I don't have it activated as I use virgin. Just encase next ocupant wants it. How does he keep it activated?

I take you are knew to renting?
 
I got sky to activate a BT line for free and got half price or something for 6 months. I don't have sky TV either. Virgin wanted £89 to activate it. I'm in a non-cable area so it would have been virgin broadband.
 
yeah I love how BT charge £130 to activate a line which just involved flicking a switch at the exchange an no real cabling, but yeah as a tenant this is your problem not the landlords
 
Glaucus said:
No, the thing is to find out about sky/virgin/phone before signing contract and getting it written down.

It's not some big conspiracy, this is standard practice. Activated phone lines are not part of your contract and will 99.99% never will be. Is the landlord going to pay to activate the landline when I leave? As I don't have it activated as I use virgin. Just encase next ocupant wants it. How does he keep it activated?

I take you are knew to renting?
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No I've been renting for 10 years and I have had issues along these lines every single time I move.... usually the previous tenant forgetting to kill their account, so i can't take over the line for weeks. This is a new one on me however.

I understand the issue, but my problem is that the estate agent refused to let me stipulate this in the contract. It was therefore a case of pay up or don't get the flat at all. Poor.

Anyway live and learn as they say!
 
Its abit like advertising a property as having a satellite dish and then expecting it to come with a skybox and a basic subscription. It just doesn't happen.
 
mothermachine said:
No I've been renting for 10 years and I have had issues along these lines every single time I move.... usually the previous tenant forgetting to kill their account, so i can't take over the line for weeks. This is a new one on me however.
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This is in your interest! If the line is active, speak to your service provider and they can takeover it without a fee. Talk-talk are very good at 'slamming' as they call it :p
 
Andy said:
This is in your interest! If the line is active, speak to your service provider and they can takeover it without a fee. Talk-talk are very good at 'slamming' as they call it :p
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It's not active that's the whole issue! :)

Sky and Virgin etc. offer discounts for the first X months but then whack it right up after and you're in for long contracts. Our flat contract is 12 months so my broadband contract must be 12 months or less (I'm on 3 month rolling with BE) otherwise we risk penalties if we move next year and can't bring it with us. Too big a risk.

Hence, cheapest BT line rental + BEthere cheapest deal = cheapest, best VFM and shortest contract. And best customer service, super fast 24 mbit and extremely reliable... I really don't want to change and sacrifice those things.
 
Andy said:
Its abit like advertising a property as having a satellite dish and then expecting it to come with a skybox and a basic subscription. It just doesn't happen.
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No it's not, at all.

Imagine that you moved in somewhere with a sat dish. You install your own box and subscription and then discover that the dish doesn't work because it hasn't been installed/connected as required to make it useful in any way. That's the situation here.
 
Also, the last time my BE broadband died for about 6 hours during the day (which has happened twice in 6 years), they refunded me an entire month's bill. Do Sky, Virgin etc. do that? My line has remained fully-working apart from those two incidents at constant 20mbit connection speed. I'd say that's pretty good. Their DNS problems are bad but I just use Google's DNS and have had 0 problems.
 
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