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The perils of moving house

Posted on 16 Jan 2008 at 17:23

The quality of available broadband is becoming a key element in choosing a home, and it usually means either switching providers or organising for your existing supplier to turn off your connection and activate the line at your new address. This being broadband, however, life isn't that simple.

Gavin Adey was a cable subscriber enjoying nearly 10Mb/sec from his provider, and he planned on relocating the service to his new house. He even checked that the new property was cabled before buying, and the online checker indicated "superfast" broadband would be available in his new cul-de-sac - a fact confirmed by his soon-to-be neighbours.

"It was only when I moved in that I found the cable network hadn't been laid to the extremities of this cul-de-sac, missing the last five houses, and that my only option was ADSL," Adey says. "I then discovered that I'm connected to a distant BT exchange, which has resulted in me now having a maximum 1.5Mb/sec connection." Adey accepts that his ADSL connection is better than nothing, but he may not have moved house had he been presented with the full facts by Virgin beforehand.

Down in Burgess Hill in Sussex, Terry Collingwood ran into problems when he moved into a property where the previous occupants had switched lock, stock and barrel to TalkTalk for telephone and broadband services. Not wishing to move from his existing ISP, Collingwood re-ordered a new BT line at a cost of £125, so he could use his existing provider at his new address.

Despite being notified weeks in advance of the previous occupant's moving date, TalkTalk didn't cancel the line, meaning BT refused to send its engineers round on the moving date. "Despite the fact that TalkTalk effectively had a block on the line running into my house, the company refused to discuss the matter with me because I 'wasn't their customer'," Collingwood says. "Only after I threatened to report the company to Ofcom did it decide to play ball." He was left without broadband for almost a month, until TalkTalk decided to relinquish the line and let BT take over.

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