Well yes I now have a working phone line ... but the issue is hardly resolved! It cost £85 more than it should have :o .... plus the cost of several hours on a mobile phone trying to arrange BT to reconnect the line. I am very far from being a happy bunny .... I've been ripped off. The issues is .. why had BT no interest in carrying out the work? Why was there any difficulty at all in getting BT to reconnect one of BT's own telephone lines for a reasonable cost? Sounds like a nice little earner for phone companies though ... charge Joe Bloggs £115 to reconnect a phone at the cost of one phone call and £30 to BT .. hmmmm nice lil £80 profit .... and If BT make it impossible for members of the public to get is done through them .... what choice do you have if you want a line except to pay £115 ???? ... spend the rest of your life calling BT customer services??

Just to update .... madasafish arranged to have the line reconnected on 25th October. The line was reconnected on that day within the stated time, and works fine, broadband connection also works fine. Downside is it cost £115 for a service which should have cost £30 (ish) from BT . But I really need the line and as far I can tell BT had no interest whatsoever in providing the service. Yup it was BT OpenReach which actually did the reconnection, but any phone service provider can get them to do it. I'm so far impressed with the service from madasafish, I've called them twice and on both occasions my call was answered in two rings by a real person who was able to assist directly. I'll very likely transfer my other line to them as soon as my 12 month contract with BT expires.

Madasafish have agreed to reconnect the line, lets see how long it takes em.

Thanks for all of the above ..... unfortunately I'm not in a cable area. I've been doing a bit of research. Apparently any phone service provider can get a line reconnected .. yes it will be BT engineers who actually do it .. BT Openreach it think? .. but at least if that is the case I won't have to talk to anybody from BT to get it done. Anyway, I'm going to go down that route and see where it takes me, I'll keep y'all posted on the result. About a year ago I had a reconnection at another house from BT without a problem, one phone call and it got sorted ... is there something smelly going on at BT?

Glad you had your phone reconnected without a problem but doesn't help me much :-|. I really have spent something in the order of 7 - 8 hours (including time for them to answer) on a mobile phone trying to arrange this. Well yes in theory escalating up the line should be the way to go ... yup been there ... but in practice all that happens is you spend more time explaining the whole thing yet again to a manager who says they will phone you back once they have investigated ... but never do. Does anyone know if its possible to have the line reconnected by anyone except BT?

I bought a house about 1.5 years ago which had an active BT phone line. At the time I didn't require the line so didn't take it over. I now require to use the line which still physicaly exists and I know what the number was. I've been on the phone to BT for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours..... trying to arrange this .... going round in circle after circle, country to country, pillar to post ad infinitum. Aparently an engineer has to come out to verify that the line actually exists ... but can anybody at BT tell me how to arrange this ... oh no not a chance ... but if I wanted to do a fresh install and pay for it they could arrange that no problem .... apparently. To be honest I'm sick of the whole thing, its taken up way to much time, had cost a lot in calls and I still haven't gotten anywhere at all with getting the line made live, its just plain completely unacceptable. Is there anybody else EXEPT BT that can activate/install a phone line? Yes I'd be quite happy to snip the existing BT line down and start again ... just so long as I never ever ever have to talk to anyone from BT ever again!!