Hi all, I recently moved house and chose BT to be my new ISP since they supplied house previously. Call it naivety but hadn’t clocked the house, (in Cheltenham, not rural) did not have Fibre and having recently installed it at my previous address, this didn’t seem major.
Anyway, before I moved in I signed up for BT fibre service and OpenReach were booked for external connection work. First they couldn’t find property so different team came out a week later. This team then sent a badly worded Permission To Work with some dodgy photos and minimal description of laying ducting to connection inspection hatch to house.
I then got a single text message from BT saying I needed to pay £6500 for excess construction work and agree by 28/12/24, I felt this seemed high but accept ducting needs to go along shared private drive. OpenReach were booked to attend house 6 Dec - I was sent 15 different text or emails to confirm this. So was somewhat disappointed when they didn’t turn up.
On complaining to BT I was told OR won’t visit until I approve costs, which is bonkers since they haven’t even met me to discuss what they want to do! BT also said the physically can’t do a copper/adsl connection, which is total rubbish because that what previous occupiers were using until two weeks ago. So it physically works, they just don’t have approval from OR.
so I’m basically being blackmailed, not by BT, who have tried to be helpful, but by OpenReach. Either I pay £6500 (and BT have a different value on this system which is bonkers) or I can’t get connected to internet.
has anyone got advice? I know the previous line will still work so happy to use that. Cellular isn’t great near me so tempted by Starlink but that’s £75 a month compared to £30 for BT fibre.
