Thoughts from the Shelf

I recently moved into a new flat and along with everything you would expect we discovered that although there was a telephone line within the premises, there was no connection to the main phone grid.

For domestic broadband purposes there was a need to get connected to the main telephone grid. Although there was a £120 connection fee for this service from BT what wasn’t made apparent upon time of order was the fact that as well as this installation fee, a 12 month line rental contract with BT was also required.

As mentioned in a previous post I have been in the process of comparing broadband packages that suited my domestic requirements. The draw back of the contract being tied in with the connection fee, apart from a 12 month financial commitment, was that any call package that was included within a monthly broadband fee was now worthless.

I found out from numerous conversations with customer services departments that even with inclusive calls within a monthly broadband fee, the BT contract meant a third party would not take over the line and thus your free calls could not be provided.

Needless to say that the broadband packages short listed looked very different without inclusive call packages. Some what feeling pushed into the decision; I decided to take on the BT broadband package with free wireless router and cordless phone as we now had a line rental contract with them too.

I did have the option of cancelling the phone connection which would have left no broadband or phone line which was not an option, so somewhat reluctantly we have been goaded into a BT broadband package. I was not impressed with the corner we had been backed into, but unfortunately large companies often have the ability to do so when another alternative cannot be sort.

In hindsight it got me thinking if there was any other local companies that would have been able to connect the phone line to the main grid, and whether anyone else had had a similar experience.