Moving house and taking your broadband

Just called BT (I have a BT line and BT Broadband) and she said that if I called a minimum of 2 weeks before I move in and book a time for an engineer to come in and put in a new line (the existing owners do not have BT) they reckon that's all needs to be done. On pre-arranged time the engineer will fit new line (124.99 inc VAT) and telephone will be up immediately and by the evening the internet will be available. Sounds like a piece of cake.........? She also said they are at the moment (4th Oct 07) running on about 1 weeks notice for engineer appointments but advised 2 weeks or more notice for an engineer slot. Hopefully our 'move in' date gives me enough notice ..... the winding, stressfull rambling starts here!

I'm currently going through the tedious process of moving my broadband (Sky) to my new address. Sky need 10 days notice to cancel the account; the new BT line has to be live for 5 days; then it can take up to 15 days to "re-connect". So that's a month without boardband service. I work from home at least 1 day a week (I made a mistake of telling Sky this and they promptly wanted to move me to a business package) and it's no joy doing so over a "dial-up" service. It would have been quicker to cancel my Sky broadband and go to another provider. Bt I can't because I'm still tied into the original contract.

Throughout this Sky have been very unhelpful. All I wanted to know was why it took so long. The response from at least 3 advisors was "because it does". I did finally get an advisor who took the time to explain it was to do with BT's new line process. Then when I re-ordered broadband the advisor abruptly ended the call because I hadn't followed the correct process. There was no apology when she finally realised that I had.

It is absolute nonsense. What are we suppose to do - stay put in the same house until our dying day!?! Should have stayed with BT Broadband, I only had a day without internet access when I last moved.

//continuation post//
With heavy heart I started this process yesterday and straight away ran into 3 gotchas (BT is world leader in these, by the way).

Gotcha 1: We can't give you compensation because during the period of the delay you didn't have a service with us - ie we didn't start to charge you until the day we started the service and so by definition there is nothing to refund you concerning the 15 day delay period.

Gotcha 2: Even although during this 15 day period, as two freelance workers working from home, you were trying to fit in all your voice calls plus your internet access over a 28kbps dial up, you are registered as a residential number and therefore you have no claim for anything to do with 'work' use.

Gotcha 3: We always state that new service is subject to survey. But we don't say when we'll do the survey; or reveal any of the details to you. So if through sheer incompetence we screw up our promised date of service to you, you'll never know because we just hide behind the 'subject to survey' clause.

By the way, this was an all BT job (ie BT is the ISP) and contrary to what another poster wrote, BT Wholesale do not give BT Retail jobs preference - on the contrary, they hide their inability to provide any decent customer service at all behind the 'statutory obligation to treat BT retail the same as any other ISP'.

I'm currently coming up to 24 hours waiting for a supervisor to call back and explain what the next steps are. However clearly the whole concept of compensation is only defined by them as related to monetary loss (and they agreed at the outset of the problems to pay for calls to the dial-up internet access). As for goodwill - that was painfully absent from yesterday's phone call. We'll see.

In contrast to the OP I was told definitively that as I had given the required notice, we could switch over without loss of BB service ie on the day of moving house, broadband at the old house would stop and it would be available from day 1 at the new address.

Turned out to be rubbish and after hours on the phone trying to sort it out we finally got broadband at the new address 15 days after moving in. During this period four separate BT staff stated, unprompted, that it was totally BT's fault as the order had been incorrectly handled and that once the service was running we should ask for compensation and/or a goodwill gesture.

//post continues: 2000 characters is not "enough for anyone" !//

I've just forked out for Demon Business 8000 - no fair usage policy (that's what it says) and prioritised traffic during peak times. It does cost me £47 a month, but they throw in a free wireless router.

No such thing as a truly unlimited broadband service anymore. Some providers are still advertising "unlimited broadband" subject to an FUP (fair usage policy). These FUPs will either state that your service will be throttled or suspended should you reach the monthly threshold...or you will incur excess bandwidth charges, much like when you go over your inclusive call allowance on your mobile phone contract.

I am a salesperson for a UK ISP. As a broadband provider we are BT's fastest growing customer but we still cannot get BT to change the way they do things. I totally agree with the original gripe and can sympathise with the inconvenience of it all.
It is not until 2-3 days after BT have connected the new line that they will allow us to order the broadband which typically takes another 7 days to complete.
Not wishing to suggest anti-competitive behaviour but BT seem to be able to do this much quicker for their own retail broadband customers. Personally i'd recommend waiting the extra 10 days so that you can have a half-decent service once it is installed because once BT have lured you in they will treat you like dirt.

I'm with BT total broadband - just gave them a call and they siad they just need a weeks notice - then they can stop the line at midnight one day, and start both phone and broadband at the new address by 8am the next morning. Sounds good, just waiting to see if it really turns out to be that easy...

Agree with the above comments this day and age things
should be better.All we want is a price and a date on which
every thing will be running not a load of jargon.Its not
to much to ask.Moving in a few days 4 hours on the phone
still do not know any thing. Rubbish Service. yours

I had to move house temporarily, while flood damage to my own house was repaired. When I moved to the temporary house, the broadband was up and running after about 2 weeks; not good, but in view of other people's comments, acceptable.

However, when I moved back, it took the Internet provider in excess of 5 weeks to get my broadband restored, and this was at an address where I had previously used broadband. Needless to say, they blamed BT for the delay, which may or may not be the case.

In the meantime, I had to use a dial-up internet connection, on a pay-as-you-go basis, which meant that my normal phone bill was doubled. Who is the beneficiary of this? None other than my telephone provider - who happen to be BT!!

I draw my own conclusions!

It takes a couple of weeks for NTL to get cable installed in your street or house. Once it is installed, it takes a day or so to get it activated. It is a real unlimited usage. You can use a much as you wish. I had been a NTL customer for many years without any problems until I had to move house last year. Cancelling my service from NTL was a nightmare. Apart from that, their internet had been very stable. That was why I was really shocked when plusnet told me that my internet usage had exceeded max as plusnet advertised their internet unlimited usage.

Stay away from BT, too.

They phoned me up a while back saying "WE'VE GOT GREAT NEWS! WE CAN MAKE YOUR SERVICE CHEAPER AND BETTER! WOULD YOU LIKE THIS??"
(I mean literally,the guy was yelling down the phone, like he thought that I would be able to hear him from his call centre in india by shouting *without* the phone.)


Turns out, what they meant by improving my service was infact dumping it down to a lower price plan. If I'd have wanted the sodding interenet to be three times slower and £2 cheaper I'd have said so, you freaking cretins!