A new line and £50?!

[#1]

Ordered my broadband in the early hours of this morning and was surprised that a new line was required and that I would have to pay £49.99 for it.

I went ahead with it anyway as I had reached a point where I was fed up looking for deals and went with them as they had been recommended to me.

The line is going into a house which I have bought and move into tomorrow. The previous owners informed me that they had a working line with Sky, so I’m confused as to why a “new line” is needed when there is already a working line there?

[#2]

@Akhan48

A new line isn't always an actual line being installed.  SKY works on it's own network and the "line" in the exchange that you are going to be connected to will need to be moved over to the BT Wholesale network (who BT/PlusNet and many others use) and that can come at a cost.

[#3]

Thing is I also checked Vodafone and their system never said I needed a new line. I checked BT and their system said I did need a new line but it would be done for free. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency. I will need to take a day off work “just in case” an engineer needs to access my house, I bet no one shows up!

[#4]

Welcome to our community forums @Akhan48

I've had a look into this and unfortunately there are no records of a recently used line at your address. This may be that the line was incorrectly registered at the wrong address on the Openreach systems, or records aren't reflecting.

Either way I'm afraid the only order we can place is for an engineer to go out to install the phone line, which costs £49.99.

It's also worth noting that if there was a recently stopped/used line, it's likely that it'd be connected to Sky's own equipment if they were the last provider, so we'd still need an engineer to convert the line, connecting it to the BT kit we use.

With regards to other providers not charging for this work, that's kind of irrelevant as it'd be their decision to not pass on a cost. I've checked the order and I can confirm your appointment is booked in for 21/12/18 between 8am and 1pm.

Let us know how it goes on the day and if you have any further queries, please feel free to post back.