| Lead time to dispatch a tech | Cost to me | |
|---|---|---|
| New line connection | 1 month | 125.- |
| Repair fault on exisiting line | 2 days | 161.- if it was my equipment that was faulty 99.- per hour to fix the resulting failure 0 otherwise (implied, unconfirmed) |
Seems like a certain company is far more interested in sending people if they can charge me an arm and a leg than if I just want to pay a standard fee for service. Meanwhile, the reason I don't say "Fuck BT" and still insist on renting a line with them is because I want O2 broadband. I signed up for them when BT confirmed to me my line was connected. O2 sent me text confirmations every step of provisioning me, sent me their wireless router box overnight, and will have DSL patched at the local switch by Wednesday, all for 15 pounds a month for 16Mb, no download cap. It would be less if I was also a mobile customer of O2, but as a newbie to the UK I can't pass their credit check for a monthly plan, and they charge to much for data on their Pay As You Go Plan.
BTW, the previous tenant seems to have had cable VoIP / broadband from Virgin Media, and no BT at all. I can't fault her, but Virgin Media is expensive if you do not want Super Cable TV as well, so I want to wrangle BT a bit more first before I give up. They're coming by Monday afternoon, between 1 and 6 PM. Oddly enough, there's a BT repair van in front of my house right now. I overcame my aprehension to go off-script to strangers and took my cheap-ass landline all-cable phone to the Box and Storage shop across the street and asked them to plug it in, just to make sure that the handset worked lest I end up having to pay 161 pounds because it being broken and I having had service all along. Dialtone was emitted by its speaker.
